These boots were made for walkin'

I’m always astonished at the amount of energy my children have. From the moment they rolled over for the first time, it seems, each began a journey of perpetual motion which has, well, never stopped. My husband and I learned early on -- I think it was the day my son learned to pull himself up and unlock the front door -- that the only way to ensure peace in our household was to engage in a head-to-head game of “last man standing” and physically wear the children out.

In the early days, strolling around our neighborhood would suffice. As each of the kids learned to walk, I’d turn the stroller around backward to give them something to lean on while they teetered their way down the block. As they got a bit older, we’d hit the parks -- only fenced ones, mind you, because with a baby and a not-quite-three year old, that perpetual motion thing proved to be quite a challenge. But I soon discovered that any park we visited only held their interest for thirty minutes or so. We tried organized sports (soccer) one summer, but my son just wasn’t into it (he still isn’t). I think his energy level was just too high to stay in one place for very long.

So we went back to walking. Safe, uncrowded walking trails where we could get some exercise and fresh air were a godsend. And the earlier we went, the better; getting out the door by 9:00 am usually meant we could be home just in time for the mid-day nap. We hit all of them: Byxbee Park, Shoreline, the trails out by Baylands nature preserve, Rancho San Antonio, The Dish, even up by Coyote Point.

When my son was a toddler, these trails were was a safe outdoor place for him to run ahead; the only rules were to stay on the trail and stay within line of sight. When my daughter came along, it was easy enough to take the double stroller so she could nap while he ran ahead. And when we got to the point where we had to contend with preschool schedules, we did our exploring on the non-school days, sometimes meeting friends or bringing lunch along to extend the outing.

What my husband and I didn’t bank on when we initiated this long-running test of stamina is that over time our children (now five and seven) have built up an exercise threshold that we now often struggle to meet. Our walks -- which these days can only happen on weekends or during school vacations -- now consist of three- or four-mile loops on the trails outside our town, where we pass horses, sheep and even a herd of alpacas en route to neighboring villages. There’s a small stream where the kids stop to build a ‘beaver dam,’ and sometimes we bring magnifying glasses and small notebooks to search for bugs and draw what we see.

Our measure of success: if the kids start moaning that they’re tired by the time we are just about to head home, then we know our work is done. That is, until next time.

An original post to Silicon Valley Moms Blog, where, when she isn’t trying to stay one step ahead of her children, Amy writes about what it’s really like to move away from Silicon Valley from her new vantage point in Gloucestershire, England.