That Special Moment

In my post Finn life I often find myself in two different situations: either I am in what feels like a grind to get through a period at work or on the home front that is demanding extra out of me than is the norm, or I am living in whatever that norm is soaking up my little family however I can before the next demanding period comes (what I call "gauntlets'). The reality is that in my life when everything is running as a routine I have a little extra capacity to spare however, but all it takes is a demanding time at work or Finn changing the routine to put me into a multi-week period where ever day I feel like I am just trying to put my head above water again. 

Luckily with work this year post-summer I had a very defined gauntlet period around my conference, and in this time period Finn has been growing quickly but not in ways that changed the daily routine which allowed life to feel manageable. The weekend after my conference I felt like I was white knuckling to Monday as I was so tired on my insides, but last week I had some time off during the week which allowed me to play catch up and get back on the ball in life before this weekend. I was a person again going into the weekend, which was the first time I didn't have my head in a gauntlet in over a month or longer. 

Saturday I mostly stayed low key to try and not overextend myself beyond getting Finn a haircut about an hour away, but Sunday I felt motivated by a new dog who wakes up every morning excited and a Finn who has been in a great mood to make the most of the day. I got us together and flung me, the dog and Finn in the car and we went to go get breakfast together at the Taco Shack. They have become my go-to place for breakfast tacos because I can get two and be full and still have two pieces of bacon for Finn to eat too. Hilda even got in on the action and ate some eggs that fell out of mine. It was a fun little moment parked in the car eating as a group. 

Then after breakfast Finn kept demanding we go to a car wash, and thanks to those demands I found a touchless car wash closer to the new house (right down the road from the old one) than I knew of before. Hilda wasn't happy but Finn geeked out on the car wash and the whole event was like a theme park ride for him. Finally after the car wash I decided to take them both to the big dog park nearby so Hilda could run off some energy. Finn had been there before over a year ago when Allen visited with Luna, but so far I had only taken Hilda to the smaller dog park with less activity. It was time to see how she did around a lot of dogs, which made me nervous and excited at the same time. 

In our year away the big dog park got some upgrades with a new paved path and a new manicured lawn. We went in and I let Hilda off the leash and she went in one direction and Finn ran in another. I dropped the stroller next to a fence and chased after him with an eye on Hilda. Eventually he climbed to the top of the park and Hilda ran over and crapped right in front of me. I cleaned it up and she was off again, and so was Finn ready to walk down the stairs that were part of the path. After some back and forth with him I looked up and couldn't see Hilda at all until I noticed a dog that looked just like her on the other part of the park that was separated by a chain link fence. She obviously convinced someone to let her through but I was nervous having the dog be two acres away, so I convinced Finn to get in the stroller and we headed toward the pond area where I last saw her. 

Originally I didn't want Finn to get near the pond because I knew he would want to swim in the water. At first as we walked around I convinced him it was "dog water," but the longer we lingered on that side the more he demanded to get in. Luckily he was strapped to the stroller and could only scream, but he did enough of that to get my some sympathetic laughs from other adults nearby. After minutes of looking all over near the pond in a panic I finally saw Hilda again back in the original part of the park we were first in, so I pushed Finn over and then grabbed her as soon as I could. As were leaving the dog area completely Finn decided since we were at a park he needed to go down a slide and demanded such. We went to the play area of the park and there wasn't a slide, as instead it had something that looked like an art project for kids to climb on. I promised him a slide to placate his screaming for it and I strapped him in the car and drove away with a tired Hilda in tow. 

I went and dropped Hilda off at the house and took Finn over to the shade park because I knew the jungle gym there was mostly safe and rarely used. Upon entering the park I became overwhelmed with nostalgia of the times I took him there after headband appointments to eat a Rosa's breakfast before taking him to Barbara's, or the times I brought Luna to walk the shaded path that was the end result of my hunt with her for shade in 2018.  That particular park has a pile of great memories associated with it, and as I let Finn run into the park my mindset was in a good place to make another special memory. 

He climbed up the jungle gym and played on the top, which I didn't mind because it was much safer up there than most I had found in the last few months of hunting. Then after he slid down he demanded to go in the lone baby swing there, which I was happy to oblige. After some back and forth he pointed to a regular swing and said "da da swing" and it was obvious he wanted me to swing alongside him. So I gave him a big push and then sat down on the nearby swing and swung in sync with him looking over. In that moment of swinging and his excitement I created yet another special moment in my memory, yet another emotional tie to the park that had given me so many. Even now I clearly remember his face and excitement of swinging with me, of him saying "thank you da da" when I did what he wanted. I remember how the hustle and bustle of the past few weeks and months melted away, and I lived in the moment more than any time in my recent life. 

After we were done swinging we went down the slide one more time, then we left to get home in time to meet my friends that afternoon for lunch in Austin. Where we met had a playground so after we ate burgers Finn went and played again, though since it was in Austin he had to share the space with other kids in a way that didn't happen at the shade park. That night as I was getting him ready to sleep I was sure to thank him for the fun time we had that day, and I reflected on that special moment of swinging one more time. I left him to sleep and went down to engage with a Lindsey who was worried the dog was sick because she didn't move, but I knew the truth: we had all just had a full day.