Nice catch.

I’m no expert on kids’ personalities and how they correspond to their birth order,

but I’d wager a decent amount of money that if you have 4 or more kids,

that last kid is pretty tough.

And,

well,

Number 7 is not a wimp.

She’s also fearless.

Which can be really good.

But also really bad.

Number 3 had a baseball scrimmage on Tuesday night.

The field he played on was behind an elementary school with a pretty awesome playground.

Which is a bonus when you have to drag the little ones to a game with you.

It looked something like this:

Everything was enclosed.

Well,

almost everything.

I walked from the car to the field with the kids, who immediately ran to the playground and dispersed.

I quickly scanned it, didn’t see anything glaring that was dangerous,  and then went back and unloaded all of our crap from the car.

As I walked back over toward the field and playground, I said hello to one of the dads,

who said to his wife,

“There’s the one I was telling you about.

Here comes…

her herd.”

I ‘ve spoken to him many times.

He’s cool.

I knew he was just kidding around,

but he did add,

“I’m not offending you by referring to your family as a herd, am I?”

To which I replied,

“As long as you don’t call me a cow, I don’t really care.”

Anyway,

my parents showed up about 10 minutes into the game.

They were part watching the kids, part watching the game.

I introduced myself to the herd man’s wife, and we were talking.

Number 3 came up to bat.

I directed all my attention toward him…

There is almost always someone crying in my house.

So,

at this point,

I’m almost completely oblivious to it.

And,

well,

Tuesday night at the game was no different.

Because while I was focused on Number 3 at bat,

Number 7 had climbed up onto the only non-enclosed section of the playground.

She was crying,

stretched between the top rung of a ladder,

and the landing platform which was about 1 1/2 feet away from it.

She was less than 20 feet away from me, but her crying did not even register on my radar.

But it registered on the wife of herd man,

who got up out of her chair,

sprinted to the bottom of the ladder,

and caught Number 7 just as she lost her grip on the landing platform,

and plummeted about 8 feet down to the ground.

Herd man’s wife fell on her ass with Number 7 in her arms.

She was a little shaken.

Number 7 was screaming.

Not out of pain.

She was pissed.

I was embarrassed.

You never want to be the mom in that situation.

But when you are the mom of a “herd” who has no idea that her 20-month-old-daughter was clinging for dear life onto a part of a playground where she never should have been in the first place,

well,

that’s when the head shaking, finger wagging, and Judge Judying kick into seriously high gear.

I got Number 7 from herd man’s wife, and all I could manage to say was,

“They should probably put you in at shortstop.”

Then I did the walk of mom shame over toward the car to get Number 7’s blankie.

Tomorrow night we have another scrimmage.

At the same field.

Ugh.

Number 7 will now have a permanent chaperone.

But just to be safe, does anyone know if these things come in size 2T?

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