Football?

After two weeks of trips to the playground, baby and I had a difficult one today. First, there were a lot of people there for the amount of space. That wouldn’t be a problem if baby were a little older, but at eight and a half months, too many kids moving too fast too nearby is a little rough on the nerves. For instance, some older kids ran up one of a pair of side-by-side slides – about six inches away from the slide that I was gingerly sliding baby down. Not a big deal, and baby was fine with it. I did tell the kids to take it easy. Less fine was a man playing football with a few eight-year-old boys near where I was trying to continue baby’s swing “program.” The boys were tossing the ball carelessly, and the father playing with them wasn’t doing a lot better. The ball repeatedly wound up behind where baby was swinging, and before I knew it I was pretty steamed. The calmest formulation I could come up with to suggest a different venue for their game of football was “Maybe don’t play football in a playground – there are fields here for that.” But I could tell it wasn’t going to come out of my mouth about as spiritually as a volcanic eruption so I gathered baby up and took her to another part of the playground, briefly, before taking her home.