How to Give Mommy a Heart Attack

I like to think I'm calm, collected and cool in crisis situations. Often, when the kids (ahem Ben, and lesser so Zack) do silly things like climb to the top of the piano, or the pantry, or whereever I can smile and take a picture before getting them down. I am unphaseable. So I thought.

Yesterday at the playground, the Smallest Bailey Boy made me completely lose my cool. I was enjoying the park, visiting with a friend. Thinking smugly (there's the problem) about how easy the playground is now. I don't have to watch that closely anymore except to make sure I can readily spot four boys. No problem. It wasn't even that terribly hot considering it's August in Florida.

I'm sure it was the smugness that was my downfall. I didn't even say it outloud, but we all know better than to think than things are easy, don't we? I'm a slow learner I suppose.

Mark came up to me and said "Mommy, come with me. You have to see this!! No real alarm in his voice, so I figured he needed to show me something funny or silly. I asked as I followed him "Is it something important or just something you want me to see." He assured me it was indeed imortant. Yet, in no way was I prepared to see what I saw. Not sure what I expected to see, but it certainly wasn't Ben standing atop the green twisty slide, happily talking to his brother on the other side of the bars of the tip top platform. I froze. I had no idea what to do or how to get him down. My brain just stopped working. So, I called my friend over to help me. She later told me she had no idea what was going on, expecting a bad word written on the playground or something similar.

Thankfully, she thought a lot more clearly than me in the moment... I was still like, "I don't know how to get him down. I can't climb up and get him down without one of us falling. First she thought we could have him jump & we could catch him. Which probably would have worked. I only had two problems with that.

1. I had visions of him thinking that was fun and try to do it again next time for the thrill of jumping and getting caught (or else climb up and jump off with no such safety net.)

2. I had visions of us missing and him going splat and breaking bones and stuff. *Shudder*

So, long story short, we ended up having me climb up the smaller slide on the side, onto the top of that slide (like the handle where you hold on to push off and go down really fast ... I need pictures to really explain this well, but I was too busy freaking out.) I looped my hand threw the upper bars of the top platform and held on with my entire upper arm to ensure I wouldn't fall off, and had him scoot as far forward as he could. It was then that I said to my three year old "Mommy's going to hold you under your arm and you need to grab on to me as tight as you can." I took a deep breath and hoped it would work. I got him, supporting myself with one arm and holding him with the other. I slowly lowered him down to my friend. I could have never gotten down holding him, so I was glad to have a backup. It was still a little scary, because it was a great enough distance to where she couldn't get a totally good hold of him, but she grabbed his bottom and did a STELLAR job not dropping my crazy child.

This totally takes the cake for crazy things my children have done. I hope it keeps the record for.ever.