Monkey Bars and Tag

Emma lived for the monkey bars. That is all she would do at recess at school. If ever we went to a park, we HAD to go to a park with monkey bars. Then, one fateful day, they tore out the monkey bars at school. Emma was devastated to say the least.

Shortly after this significant loss, she started to play tag at recess with a group of kids. Now she plays tag most days at recess and wants to go to the park to play tag. She also wants to play tag around the house. She is very good at tag. I am actually shocked at how good she is. She will even taunt whoever is "it". And she is sneaky and fast.

We went to the park today and there was a little 5 year old boy who wanted his grandpa to play tag with him and his grandpa didn't want to. Emma was asking me to play tag with her and so I suggested she play with him. The grandpa told Emma not to play tag with him because he essentially thought that Emma would be too timid or not take the game as serious as this boy. I told the grandpa she could hold her own. Sure enough, she did! She had that boy running in a full sprint for a long time. My favorite part was seeing her run in a full on sprint for about 20 minutes straight with the biggest smile on her face. She was loving it. And this was after playing tag at another park 5 minutes before. She seemed to have no concept of fatigue. The whole time the grandpa kept making comments on how impressive she was and that she was actually a match for his grandson. I admit it - she was good.

Eventually all the kids at the park left because everyone was heading home for dinner. I thought Emma would welcome the down time because she had essentially been playing tag for an hour wit very little break. Instead, she turned to me and asked me to play tag with her. I was gob smacked. So we played and I tagged her with a move that was quite impressive if I do say so myself! Emma was running down the stairs on the playground and yelled, "Ow!!" So she came up to me and showed me where she hurt her hand. I kissed it better and then she wanted a hug, then she walked off, turned back at me and said, "Ha! I tagged you! You're it!" She was sneaky alright! She wanted a hug so she could tag me! She knew my weakness for hugs! She was so proud of herself and I confess, I was proud of her too!

Oh and a few nights ago we went to the park as a family after dark and wore glow sticks and played tag in the dark. It was a ton of fun. The kids loved it. It was one of the funnest times at a park that I think we have ever had as a family.