well at least we tried.

ok... well, there is one part of me who would like to maintain a "super-parent" identity and only show you the latter of these photos. but the other part of me wants you to know how insane and hilarious and FUN parenting is and can be.

saturday was a beautiful day and matt and i had decided a little while back that we wanted to try and go kayaking (with the baby) sometime soon. we got the stickers for the boats. we even got aubrey a toddler "off-shore" life-vest. we were ready to go.... and totally out of our minds.

we packed everything up on saturday morning and headed out to marsh creek. no one had had anything to eat yet. we were all a little cranky, but we had loaded everything up....we had driven everything over....we were going to do this. it was a fiasco. it was almost as bad as when matt and i kayaked on our anniversary in one of the two-seater kayaks (AKA "the divorce boat").

aubrey isn't really happy about anything new... she takes a little while to warm up to things, so she started bawling as soon as we put her in the boat. all i could think was, let's just make it to the next shore, we can have lunch and try again on the way back. i spent the entire 10 minute paddle singing "row, row, row your boat" and feeding her snacks so she would stop crying. it didn't work.

we pulled into the next little shore area. it was muck. we waded in and aubrey stopped crying.... and started throwing sand and eating pond scum, while matt and i stood there and bickered over whether it was a harder job to entertain the cranky kid or to pull in the boats and unload lunch. nobody won. we ate lunch..... and three different people got back into those boats. (obviously next time we are eating lunch before we try anything crazy like this again.)

the ride back was an entirely different experience. aubrey threw rocks in the water and when she ran out of rocks.... she was comfortable enough to start moving around. i don't really know which was worse, the crying child who stayed in one place or the happy child who was trying to capsize the boat.

we waded in back at the boat dock.... i pulled the boats up to the grass, and matt played with aubrey in the water. the whole day ended with aubrey bravely sticking her face toward the water and losing her balance....and basically going under. didn't anyone tell this kid there is NO SWIMMING at Marsh Creek, it's a reservoir. she went home in my t-shirt and a diaper.... super-mom forgot a change of clothes.