We somehow ended up with a Saturday with almost nothing scheduled, so of course I crammed the day full with a trip to Ohiopyle. Mila had never been there and Alexis hadn't been there in years. In fact, the last time Alexis was there, and she remembers this exactly, she lost a water show while playing in the river. She watched it float away and then get carried away by a waterfall and SHE LOVED THAT SHOE OMG. WHY DIDN'T I SAVE IT?
She's still mad about it. It was AT LEAST eight years ago. The kid doesn't hold grudges or anything. o_O
I think that whole moment of drama and sadness is why we hadn't been there in so long. Alexis has brought the subject of the shoe up a few times over the years, so subconsciously I probably knew it was best to stay away.
ALAS.
The good news is that Alexis recovered after about an hour of hiking along the peninsula. She talked about that damn shoe for the entire hour, but whatever. The bad news is that Mila discovered a reason to bring up Ohiopyle from time-to-time and make me regret EVERYTHING.
Those little black dots are tadpoles. As we were hiking along the peninsula, we came across some really big puddles in the giant rocks and there were THOUSANDS of tiny little tadpoles and frog eggs in the puddles.
Mila was in love.
We've established that she's obsessed with frogs, especially catching and borderline torturing frogs, and there were thousands of smaller potential friends. I had to fuss at the kid at least 24987519387503 times not to put her sticky little paws in the water because the tadpoles were much too young to be handled. I let her sit there and watch them for a solid hour, but touching them would have been a step too far.
But the biggest source of Mila's sadness was that she figured out that there were so many free baby frogs sitting there and she could have taken so many of them home but OMG I WASN'T PREPARED FOR SUCH A MOMENT.
Seriously, the child was PISSED at me because I didn't come armed with a tadpole transportation system. I didn't have so much as a water bottle on me, so there was literally no way for her to catch a few (hundred) of them and add them to her own pond.
I wasn't sad about this, by the way, because while the tadpoles are probably doomed because of where they are, it's not my problem to solve. Gotta let nature do its thing, y'know? And I don't know that they would have survived the two-hour drive. And then there's the fact that our pond fish would probably mistake them for food. Lots of reasons to let them be.
But Mila wanted them.
And it was ALL MY FAULT that her dreams weren't coming true.
So basically we can never go back to Ohiopyle. I can't deal with Little Miss I Lost My Shoe and Little Miss You Crushed My Frog Dreams.
