You don’t buy a puppy dog if you don’t have time to walk it, and the same goes for puppy people. That’s right. Don’t buy a baby if you don’t have time to walk it.

We pay some local people puppy sitters (i.e. preschool) to run our girl around during the week, but come week’s end, its all on us. And because Maggie is rarely sober enough to find the front door on the weekend (KIDDING! She gets it like 70% of the time), it generally falls on me to take Eleanor for some exercise.

While sometimes we hit the pool, the majority of our outdoors time happens at the park. She’s definitely an “active” girl, in the same way rabid squirrels are “active,” so as soon as I set her down she’s off! and I spend most of my time plodding along after her as she bolts across impossibly long grass fields or hovering underneath her with my arms outstretched to catch her as she scales play structures designed for kids twice her size. This can be sweaty, exhausting work, but usually Eleanor brings enough comedy to make it entertaining (i.e. slightly less agonizing).

Eleanor is an awfully friendly person. She says “Hi!” to literally everyone we walk past, which is hilarious, because a lot of grown people are freaked out by little kids accosting them. It’s the same reaction you would see if a smiley cat had shouted “Hello!”. Their heads snap up and their eyes get a little big, and they keep walking but start watching her as they move past, until their heads are almost turned around, and maybe then after they’ve walked about ten feet past us they’ll mumble a “Hello”. That, or they completely ignore her, which I can sympathize with because who is this tiny person yelling at me? but also makes me want to punch them in the back of their stupid heads because HEY! ADORABLE GIRL TALKING HERE! YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY, A-HOLE! And then sometimes I do it, and we have to run really fast, fast as a leopard, pump those little legs! So at the park, she runs up to all the other kids and gets right in their faces and gives them the smiling how-do-you-do, and sometimes the kids are as weirded out as the adults are and back away slowly or even turn and run crying, or, and this is the best, they are totally INTO IT and then they grab her hand and are BFFs for the next three minutes.

Eleanor has a serious baby fetish, so if there is a baby at the park, she will seek it out like some sort of baby dowsing rod. This always means that I have to talk to the parents, which is FUN, but almost worth it for the ridiculous grin on Eleanor’s face when she’s locked a baby in her sights and starts talking to it: “Hiii baby!” (baby stares dumbfounded at Eleanor). “He’s a baby” she’ll tell me. “He need his bottle. He need to take a nap. He’s tired.” The parents are of course always grateful for these astute observations.

So she runs and plays, scampers and capers, while I stand by and sweat and squint a lot. She loves it, and I love to see her love it, so in the end I don’t mind it that much. Plus, the more time at the park, the better the nap slash bedtime, so folks, it pays to walk your baby.

At the park this past weekend, where most of these shots were taken, Eleanor befriended this girl who was practicing her kung fu moves. Actually she looked like she was maybe doing some Power Ranger kinda stuff, since once upon a time I was a suburban child in karate and did not recognize her elaborate leaping fireballs. So of course Eleanor is intrigued by the intense maneuvers and the girl notices her, and asks her, “Do you want me to give you a lesson?” Eleanor nods yes. The girl then closes her eyes and starts breathing heavily through her nose (obviously about to bust some serious moves) and Eleanor runs down the hill. This happens twice more, and as Eleanor is running off again, the girl walks up to me and says, “Can I ask you a question?” I nod yes. “She doesn’t like to listen, does she?”