Our niece and her husband and their two young children were here from Montana visiting us recently and I’m afraid that I burned more than my fair share of the planet’s digital pixels, taking photographs of the sweet munchkins.
Leah and I were also reminded of the wisdom of Mother Nature’s grand plan for perpetuation of our species (IE: that the baby-delivering Stork drops bundles of joy on the front porches of couples in their 20’s and 30’s, not in their late 50’s.)
The humbling truth is that no matter how fit I like to think I am (and I am a runner, and a cyclist, and a sometimes-mountain-climber,) the fact of the matter is that I would be hard-pressed to keep up with a kiddo, once he/she learns to walk. Leah and I watched in chagrined amazement as, first thing in the morning, our kid visitors hit the ground running...and the young-uns kept moving, and chattering, and go-go-going till story/bath/bed time in the evening.
Endurance athletes that we’ll see performing at the highest levels of sport during the upcoming Olympic Games have nothing on a two or five-year-old.
It could be said that I bailed on even trying to make action pictures of our young visitors, opting instead to look for photographic moments -- rare moments, I might say -- when the kiddos paused, in sweet repose. I would record the lull in the visual action, but soon -- like THAT! -- the whirling-dervish munchkins would be off again, on the move.
I suppose it'll sound like the runner/cyclist in me is being kind of defensive, but I would like to add this: It pumped up my deflated athletic ego to see that, by the end of the day, even the young parents were tuckered out.
