bitter-sweet

so today i met up with my friends tara and heather, and their kids of course :) for a playdate. it was a beautiful, sunny, and brisk day and it couldn't have been a more perfect day for the park.

russell who is currently "anti-kid" starting throwing a fit as soon as he saw the other kids around. after ignoring him for about 5 minutes he finally began to play. PHEW! that was a relief... didn't want my half-hour drive to the other side of town and my picnic lunch i packed late last night to turn into a waste... so the kids are having so much fun playing and and running around for like over an hour - it was great!

it was time for lunch and we walked over to the picnic tables close to the pond because those tables weren't covered, and we wanted as much sunlight as possible since it was a bit chilly. the kids ate their lunch quickly and happily (another thing i was grateful for since that doesn't happen all the time) and then got their halloween treats that i brought (m&m's YUM!). afterwards they wanted to feed the ducks which were close by (probably because we had food) so i gave natalie a bag of popcorn to throw to the ducks and she walks over to the pond to feed them. how sweet... now comes the bitter part:

as she is throwing the popcorn to the ducks i see her edging closer and closer down the little hill towards the pond. at this point i yell at her and tell her to back up because she is too close to the water. in a split second, as she took that next little step forward (she doesn't listen to mommy well), she was in the water. my heart dropped and i dashed over to her to find her sitting in water covered up past her chest. luckily she just landed in the bank and the water was not very deep. and surprisingly, she did not cry or even get upset - in fact i was the one shaking and feeling like i was about to cry! at that point, i figured ok, take her clothes off and just go home - she can ride in the car naked. but here she was standing there soaking wet in her [new and cute] clothes, her socks all sloshy and it was a very chilly 60 degrees out. well, thank goodness for my friends whose brains were working when mine was not. heather offered logan's 18-MONTH ONESIE for natalie to wear since he had a sweater on top of it. and tara offered bryson's old pants that she happened to have in her truck. she even offered some of bryson's old underwear that she was passing down to logan but i thought natalie's panties weren't that wet. anyway, natalie ended up in this really great thrown together boys outfit that i couldn't have been more grateful for! here's the picture i took when we got home:

thanks girls!

p.s. all is well - natalie is doing fine. mommy got her nerves back to normal. and daddy didn't get upset like mommy thought he would (he's the overprotective one, btw).