Recess

As parents of a future elementary-schooler, the dog park helps us remember what recess was like. Everybody is potentially your friend, and you figure out the social stratification as you go. Kids don't literally sniff each others' butts, but there's a lot of drooling, barking, and chasing of tennis balls.

The only time I ever threw up in school was in second grade from spinning on the tire swing. I waited until the spelling test and then hurled in the class sink. Kids are basically puppies at that age, though I did ace that test.

The worst was when it rained and you had to have an indoor recess day. I suspect the teachers hated it even more than we did. We'd fight over which sticky boardgame to play and suffer through the afternoon with way too much energy. Likewise, our dogs have suffered some predominantly indoor days because we've been busy with Lyla. Now that the weather is getting nicer, we can go to the dog park and put Lyla in the Baby Bjorn. And when she's old enough to run around, we can tire ourselves out trying to prevent her from picking up feces-smeared tennis balls.

Today Lyla slept in the Bjorn throughout our entire dog park excursion. Our dogs, though, ran like happy idiots. Now they're dead tired, which gives us a recess.