a dangerous walk to school...

I was walking this morning taking Kaleb to school, he was doing his 'slow' walk which is very similar to his normal walk but even slower (if that is possible?!). When I walk to pick him up it is a fairly quick 15 minutes, but when I have him with me it is easily half an hour. I have finally stopped caring about time, if I am late then I am late and, that's life. We leave at the same time every morning and some days we make it and other days we are late... today was a 'we are going to be late' sort of a day. I was getting annoyed to be honest. I have things I want to do, the longer he dawdles the longer it takes me to get on with my day. You know?

We got into a section of the street that he loves, mostly because it's a back alley and he has no need to worry about cars, he can just play. As we were walking he had to stop at each puddle and toss some pebbles in it to watch the ripples. As we passed each flower he had to stop and inspect it (he was looking for bugs that might be dangerous), every fire hydrant I got treated to the story of what fire took place that they used that particular hydrant (yes, he's becoming a master story teller). The trees, now shedding their blooms make for another 5 minutes stop and conversation (perhaps an alien came down in the night and broke all the flowers off to eat them all up?!). Slowly... very slowly we are getting further down the street, step by step we are getting a little bit closer to the school.

I kept calling him 'Kaleb! Let's go!' until we hit the next alley we pass through... this alley was littered with puddles, and I just sort of gave in to the fact that we would be late. So, I slowed down and stopped bugging him. As we passed each puddle, his little hands tossing in the pebbles, his feet dancing around the puddles to avoid waking the scary sea monsters, as we climbed along the side of the alley (a curved curb) because it was a bridge to save us from the evil sea monsters that live in the puddles I began to smile. Somewhere between alley number 1 and alley number 2 it dawned on me that I am at risk of turning it 'Calvin's' mother! You know her right? Calvin and Hobbes... and the Mom who spoils all their fun!

Every year I used to get a Calvin and Hobbes book from 'Santa'... it was always the very first gift 'he' brought me and it was left beside my bed in generous attempt to allow my parents a bit of a lie in. I would read the stories and dream that one day I might have a child as awesome as Calvin! He was so cool, his imagination knew no bounds and though often twisted... his humor was unmatched.

Walking to school today, facing hungry aliens and sea monsters and at one point even a bunch of garbage that had been torn through by an evil purple minion I realized that my prayer had been answered. He even comes with a Tiger. How can I be annoyed by that?

End results of this mornings walk... we were late, but we were spared the wrath of the sea monsters and paid homage to them by giving them pebbles, and thankfully the evil purple minion was gone before we walked past, and didn't return on my walk back home. I wonder what will happen on the way home?