I don’t know if they give medals for this, or maybe just a certificate of achievement, but I can say with hand on heart that I have survived solo trips to the waterpark with two young children—more than once.
The first time we went, it was easy. They were both too young for the waterslides, but they couldn’t get enough of the kids’ play area. The play area is really just a gigantic play structure with water. There’s a massive bucket that dumps water on everyone every couple of minutes, a few little slides, and water cannons. As the creatures have gotten older, they’ve graduated to the water slides. Although the kids are only 18 months apart, the second year was the hardest. My son was ready for the water slides; my daughter was not. That visit was challenging, because with only one parent, you’re split in two directions—keeping an eye on the little girl who wants to stay at the play structure while also accompanying my son up the long ladder for his first waterslide adventures.
The first couple of times he went up, my daughter and I went with him, then rushed back down the stairs together to meet him at the bottom of the slide—because you have to think about what happens at the end of the slide. Imagine a dad racing down the stairs of a waterslide with a confused five-year-old in tow just to intercept a six-year-old on the other end. Needless to say, I got my steps in that day. Thankfully—maybe out of exasperation—my daughter decided she was ready to try, and my son grew confident enough to go on his own and find his way back to us if we got separated. By the end, I could go down the slides with them. I don’t remember them being that fast.
It’s a funny thing about days at the waterpark. When you start, the kids are still little—but over the course of about three years, they grow up just enough to become independent and still enjoy all the great things about waterparks. At the same time, I’ve changed too—gone from feeling like an old, worried parent paranoid about everything that could go wrong, to doing things I haven’t done since I was a kid. Sometimes, when people ask me if anything good has come from a situation like mine, I think about days at the waterpark—where, by necessity, you get to be eight years old again.