{"id":163,"date":"2006-05-01T15:10:42","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T15:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/05\/01\/just-keep-walking\/"},"modified":"2006-05-01T15:10:42","modified_gmt":"2006-05-01T15:10:42","slug":"just-keep-walking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/05\/01\/just-keep-walking\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Keep Walking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friday night, we took the kids and the dogs for a walk on a trail near our house. It&#8217;s a nice paved trail that is frequented by cyclists, roller bladers, and walkers. In the evening, however, traffic dies down a bit and it&#8217;s perfect for families. We go about a mile up and then turn around and walk back. <\/p>\n<p>As we were walking back, N started tuckering out. He doesn&#8217;t walk the whole time, of course, but he still gets tired. In this case, he didn&#8217;t want me to carry him. Instead, he wanted to walk really slowly. I mean really slowly. We fell behind the group, way behind.<\/p>\n<p>We were doing our best to catch up, with me herding him along with encouraging comments like &#8220;ready, set, go!&#8221; and &#8220;let&#8217;s run! run! RUN!&#8221;, when he looked back and said &#8220;walking&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I glanced back, and, sure enough, there was a woman walking fast enough to catch up to us. I said &#8220;yes, she is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He responded with &#8220;Big Girl. Big Girl Walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Uh-oh. There are few things worse than having your toddler call someone a &#8220;big girl&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, she&#8217;s just walking. She&#8217;s walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I tried to push him a long, but he held on to my knees, watching the girl and bobbing his head up and down slightly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Shirt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Huh?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Shirt walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I should let you know that the girl was not so much fat as she was well-endowed. She was also wearing a shirt that was a size or two too small and, ahh&#8230;not very supportive, if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n<p>When I looked down at N, I saw that his eyes were glued to her shirt, and his head was bobbing up and down in time with the shirt. I put my hand on his head.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Shirt! Shirt Walking! Big Shirt! Big Shirt Walking!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Shhh&#8230; She&#8217;s walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At this point, she caught up to us. I smiled my most innocent smile. &#8220;Hello!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>She waved back and said hi. N said &#8220;Shirt! Shirt Walking!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I nodded agreeably. &#8220;Yes, <strong>She&#8217;s <\/strong>walking. She is. Walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, Shirt!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes, she. She&#8217;s a girl and she&#8217;s walking. Let&#8217;s catch up to momma. Let&#8217;s go find momma.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, my deception worked.&nbsp; She never heard what N was saying. In fact, when she passed the others, she commented to J on what a cute son she had. <\/p>\n<p>Phew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday night, we took the kids and the dogs for a walk on a trail near our house. It&#8217;s a nice paved trail that is frequented by cyclists, roller bladers, and walkers. In the evening, however, traffic dies down a bit and it&#8217;s perfect for families. We go about a mile up and then turn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-2D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}