Punishment Playtime

In general, having a dog and having a child are nothing alike. Until I can put my kid in a crate when I go out or drop her at a kennel at a moment's notice, I'm sticking to that statement.

However, there is some overlap in your parenting and dog training style. Whenever the dog acts up, my knee-jerk reaction is that she needs more exercise. Tired dogs are good dogs, right? Now when Faith acts up, I also think the solution must be that she needs more exercise. Besides, Michelle Obama keeps lecturing me about getting her outside an hour a day. When the first lady tells you to do something, you have to listen...I'm pretty sure that's how our government system works.

I try to get Faith outside as much as possible, even though it's a huge pain in the butt for me. I'm either constantly dragging her plastic car around (with her in it) because she got "stuck" or if I involve water, then the clean up for that is often as long as the playtime itself.

I could take her to the playground, but Ms. Anti-social won't run and play there and just stands and glares at the other children.

I'm not anti-social, I'm just too cool for other kids.

Last night around 2am I was woken up to the sound of Faith shouting "WHOA!" and then laughing. I guess she's been watching old Blossom episodes?

I blame all those new Old Navy commercials with Joey and Blossom

She was laughing and talking to herself until almost 4am. I only had to go into her room once, but I can't fall back asleep when she's giggling and clapping and randomly shouting every word she knows. I have no clue how my husband can sleep through someone shouting "ELEPHANT!" at 3am, but he can.

We had a really rough nap time today (she fought it for two long hours), so as soon as I woke her up I made her go back outside because I'm determined to get more sleep tonight.

I didn't feel like messing with getting the sprinkler out and dealing with the muddy clean-up, so I just had her playing with her plastic car in the driveway. In theory, this is a solo activity for a toddler, but mine is a horrible driver.

This tree came out of NOWHERE

My GPS said to make a left turn

Officer, I only had one sippy cup of juice, I swear I'm not drunk.

We have a large drainage ditch on one side of our front yard and she knows to not drive her car off that side of the driveway. She was feeling her oats today and was backing up her car as fast as her little sneakers could push and gave me a shit-eating grin as she got closer and closer to the ditch. I yelled at her to stop (so effective) but she went over the side into the ditch before I could waddle-run over there in my flip-flops.

Luckily those plastic cars are built for hard use and it rolls pretty slowly on grass, but it still tipped over and scared the crap out of Faith. I'll be interested to see if she stays away from the ditch side of the driveway now!

I was going to post today about how my rib is starting to finally improve and the pain is better, but I think I undid a lot of my progress with my sprint across the driveway and mad dive to catch the car as it went down the hill. I even slept without my painkillers last night (and ran 6 miles yesterday and 7 today), and I felt pretty good today...until Faith tried to break me. It must be some kind of sisterly agreement they have, I just wonder how they are communicating.

I managed to get into physical therapy for an appointment on Friday, which may or may not help my rib pain. My doctor was unsure, but he said it couldn't hurt to try. The PT place was really booked, but my doctor's office actually called them and asked them to fit me in so that's how I got in so quickly. I'm hoping it makes a difference, but probably the best thing would be if I could avoid doing stupid things like trying to prevent a toy car full of 32lbs of toddler from rolling down a hill.

I know you didn't just tell everyone how much I weigh.

Maybe that toddler treadmill isn't such a silly idea after all?


Do you think of exercise as a cure-all for unwanted kid and dog behavior?