Today, Dylan, Blake, and I went out for a walk after dinner. There was still plenty of daylight left and I thought that it would be a nice way to relax and unwind as we got closer to bedtime. Usually when we all go out for a walk, I wear Blake in a front pack and Dylan rides in a jogging stroller. That is how we started out.
About four minutes into the walk, Dylan started to get upset. I asked him what he needed, and he told me that he wanted to get out of the stroller. I tried to tell him that he could not get out, and that I felt like it would be dangerous for him to walk outside of the stroller but he just got more and more upset. Finally, I stopped and asked myself if trying to keep him in the stroller was really worth it.
After I thought about it for half a minute, I decided to unbuckle Dylan and let him try walking behind the stroller. I realized that it was possible that Dylan and I could safely push the empty stroller together. I had been resisting the idea of doing it because we had not walked together that way before. It was now our chance to learn how to make it work together.
First, I asked him if he thought that he could do one thing for me that would help us both out because it would keep him safe. He said that he could, and I asked him to keep his hands on the handle of the stroller. I probably did not even have to ask him to do it because it looked like he wanted to get behind the stroller and push it anyways. Away we went, pushing the empty stroller together. I walked on the side next to the road and he walked on the side next to the woods. Surprisingly, he kept his hands on the handle the whole time. I told him that he could jump back in at any time, but he really wanted to walk. We must have gone about a mile and a half to two miles, and he walked the whole way with the exception of about ten minutes in the middle where he rode in the stroller before getting out to walk the rest of the way home.
As we pushed the empty stroller, I got a little emotional inside. My little boy is growing up. I am not sure if he is going to abandon his stroller completely just yet. Something tells me that there may be a return to it the minute that Blake is old enough to use it and I try to put Blake in there. Either way, he is becoming a big boy in so many ways and I am so very proud of him.