The Slide Incident

Posted by kara

Yesterday was beautiful, so Toshi and I went to play outside. We spent the first few minutes going up and down the stairs. Then we slowly walked along the alley. Next it was back and forth over the “Whoa!”-cracks on the sidewalk. After a while, we made it to the playground that is half a block from our apartment.

Toshi loves the swings. We did the swings for a long time. A little girl next to us liked Toshi. She was almost 3. I talked to her mom a little bit. We even did introductions and talked about Gymboree. Once Toshi was done with the swings, the little girl followed her around the playground set. We did the spiral slide a few times. Finally I realized that Toshi could go down the slide herself and her shoes wouldn’t stick and she wouldn’t fall off the slide at the end. Another girl came to the slide, so I told Toshi we could go down the smaller, plain, straight slide. It’s a double slide, so I was going to go down next to her.

Toshi sat down and zoomed down the slide before I could unstick my shoes. Turns out that the slide has a slight curve to it. Toshi kept going forward, even though the slide curved… she flipped over the slide of the slide and fell onto the wood chips. I don’t know how she landed, but she had wood chips in her mouth and on the back of her coat. She was crying pretty hard. I felt horrible and mortified. Not only did I let Toshi fall off the slide, but that other mom was right there and saw the whole thing.

So we quickly walked home, passing other families. (I heard a little kid ask, “Mommy, why is she crying?”) After about 1 minute, her cry started to sound like her fake cry. She pointed to an airplane in the sky and said, “Bye bye plane!” and then continued to fake cry. Then she was quiet in the stairwell. When we got through the door of the apartment, she was crying again. Paul took over while I explained what happened. She stopped crying and was walking around, acting normal.

Poor thing. She seems fine, but I always worry. It was just horrible to see her flip over the slide’s edge. I called my older brother to get the doctor’s point of view. He assured me that wood chips are the best playground material to fall on and that she should be fine since she only fell about 2 feet down. She doesn’t have any scrapes. Still, I feel so guilty. I wish I could ask her for forgiveness. Paul assured me that worse will happen. Great.

And there goes my run at being #1 mom…