I know this won't be the last time that one of my kids gives me a heart attack. I need to get used to the idea that I will never have control over every situation. While Haley and Judd were in town we took the kids to a new water-park. It was a new adventure for the kids and Raegan walked in as confident as ever. She ran to the pink kiddy tube slide and slid down, and was kind of coughing and choking at the bottom, but no big deal, she had a life jacket on and she survived. She ran to me for words of affirmation, and of course I told her great job and then I said that she should try out the yellow slide now (which was the other kiddy slide right next to the pink one), she took off her life jacket and went sprinting in the other direction up the stairs to the tippy top of the water park slides, the part that's only for adults. I was screaming after her and running but soon realized she couldn't hear me over the noise and there was no way that I was going to catch her before she went zooming down the world's hugest tube slide; I needed to be at the bottom for her when she came out. My heart was pounding in my chest as I waited at the bottom of the slide I thought she was going to come out of, since I couldn't see her at the top. A few of the slides had yellow on the bottom, so I took a guess.
The next thing I know is Raegan is standing behind me and she said, "Mom, I did it." The look on her face was terrified and I could see she was using all her energy not to cry and be brave. She hadn't come out the slide I thought, she had come out the one from the very top. I hugged her and she started bawling. I tried to be brave myself and tell her she did a good job and it was over and she didn't have to go down that slide again.
She continued to melt down and just wanted to go home. After talking to her for a minute she admitted to me that when she ran up to the top the coach (life guard) yelled at her, "WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!" and she went down the slide anyway. Raegan said, "I don't know why he was saying that to me. Getting in trouble was harder on her then the actual slide itself. She didn't want me to tell anyone what had been said to her and later that night she was still talking about it. After I put her to bed she came out and told me, "Every time I try to go to sleep I think about the coach saying whoa, whoa, whoa, I can't stop worrying about it."
We probably won't be going back to this over priced water park again, well at least not for awhile.
The slide she thought I was talking about and ended up going down by herself.
