Rules, Shmules...

Parenting skills went down the tube (or the blue slide) yesterday!

We went to the WaterPark. I still have several visits left on my pass, so figured we should get busy using those up before summer is over. Kirk HATES the waterpark, so using them on a weekend after school starts is out of the question! It was a pretty good day...except for one little hic-cup...

For those of you who have been to our WaterPark in Arkadoo you know that there is a blue curly slide...super fun. Well, this summer, Keaton and Sawyer both mastered it, and it has become their favorite thing to do there. Technically, Sawyer is still a shy short of the 48 inches that they "require" you to be to go down the slide, but I haven't worried about it because he can swim like a fish and the drop-off point for the slide is like 3 feet something...Sawyer can touch no problem.

We might have run into this particular problem once or twice before, but it hasn't ever run like fire through my veins like yesterday. And it all started with a lifeguard. I've never seen her there before, but "Miss Stickler For the Rules" was manning the slide yesterday when we got there. So begins my excellent parenting...

After we are all slathered up with sunscreen, Sawyer and Keaton head off to slide. I can see from where my chair is, that they have made their way up the stairs; Keaton slides down; but Sawyer walks back down the stairs. "Hummmm..." I say. Sawyer makes his way back over to me and I can tell he is about to cry. He tells me that he is "too short" to go on the slide.

I comfort him and send him back into the pool. "This is ridiculous," I think to myself (probably said it outloud, because the lady in the way-too-revealing swimsuit sunning herself next to me while reading a trashy Fabio-on-the-cover novel was looking at me rather strangely). "He's been on that slide a million-and-one times and now they are going to stick us with the rules."

[Okay, now let me insert that I LOVE rules. I think that they are important and that we need them. Please don't worry about the Goodrum family...we're okay.]

So, back to my fuming...after stewing about it for awhile and watching with hawk eyes to make sure that no other little people were being allowed on that slide, I decided to act on my mama bear instincts.

I marched over to the side of the pool (my little swimsuit skirt just a-swingin' and my flip-flops just a-flippin'), called my red-headed bear cub out of the pool, and informed him that I was going to go talk to the lifeguard for him. Sawyer looked at me like I was a superhero --ahhh...proud moment (possibly evens out my parenting blunder that is still to come! No, not quite!).

So, we march up the stairs to the blue slide. I wait for "Miss Stickler" to even pay attention to me...she is intently engaged staring out into space...hmmmmmm...

Finally...there is acknowledgment...

Very sweetly, I purr, "He has been going down this slide all summer, is there a problem today?"

*Growly voice* "He's too short."

*Not so sweetly* "Excuse me? Like I said, he's been going down all summer. He can swim like a fish. Now, in August, he's too short?"

*More growly* "Yep." And then Miss Stickler turns away and pretends that my red-headed angel and I aren't even there.

Okay, fuming now. And it isn't really because of the slide...we could get over the slide...but, not sure why this life-saving public servant is set on hurting my baby so badly! (I realize that I may be exaggerating a bit...but, it was traumatic yesterday!) :)

Back to the story...

Sawyer and I head down the stairs, and in a momentary lapse of parental judgement, I say, *loud enough for Miss Stickler to hear* "It's okay, Sawyer, they change the lifeguards every once in awhile. Just watch up here and when the lifeguard changes, you can come slide."

Gasp!

My freckled-face punkin looked at me with such shock and joy at the same time. Could it be that his mother is giving him permission to be sneaky and beat the system? Something that we are harping on at home all the time, and here, now, in public, she has given the green light?

Sawyer scurried back to the pool before I could call him back and recant. I thought about it, but in that moment, I was still highly irritated at Miss Stickler upstairs, so I let him go. I flip-flopped my way back to my chair, laid back, and tried to pretend that it never happened....

Until, not 10 minutes later, I hear Sawyer, in his deep, manly 6 year old voice, YELL at his brother from across the pool, "Hey, Keaton, the lifeguard changed. Mom said I can slide after the mean lifeguard came down!"

HORROR!

Now the lady with the Fabio book was really scrunching her nose at me...


(Let me tell you that as horrified as I am that I actually allowed my child to partake in my deviant behavior...he had a great time sliding yesterday...because all of the other FIVE lifeguards that rotated through let him! I counted!)