Monday, Shannon had the brilliant idea to drop the girls off with me when I finished work so that I could take them to the park near campus while she went for a run. The three of us had a blast enjoying the crisp air, the best playset in Northfield, and the company of a bunch of other great kids.
Genevieve did a surprisingly good job walking on the uneven pebbles, happily crawled through the ten-foot tunnel, and pleaded charmingly to get into the baby swing. The one thing she was leery of doing was crossing the suspended bridge: the bouncing was too much to handle while walking, and a bit scary while crawling.
Julia was pretty much okay with the fact that I had to monitor Vivi all the time, and waited patiently for help climbing up the various pieces of the playset. Watching her choose activities, I was struck by how often she tried the climbing equipment versus the slides or other parts of the playset. There's something about going vertical that appeals to her. So while I helped Vivi traverse the bridge for the nth time, Julia ran ahead of us onto the far platform, where there's a short ladder to the top of the best slide.
The next thing I saw was Julia flat on her back on the ground under the playset. She'd apparently reached the end of the bridge and turned to look back at us, then stepped backwards right off the edge of the platform and fallen four feet straight down. I raced over there and scooped her right up (stupidly, in retrospect: what if she'd injured her back?). She wasn't even crying yet, and only did cry for a few seconds, being more interesting in telling me that she'd fallen. She couldn't be too specific about what happened, but she did let me make sure nothing seemed out of place, and within a few minutes was pulling out of my arms to get back to playing.
What a gut check.