Color Running

This past weekend, we ran the Cleveland “Shine” Color Run 5K, aka “the happiest 5K on the planet.” We had a blast. A especially was in joyful exuberance at each of the color stops, where we paused to paint each other with dyed cornstarch powders and occasionally glitter. The first stop was blue and A ever so gently filled her hands with powder and methodically sought out each of us to paint our faces with her favorite color.

“What’s the next color going to be?” we asked her. “Orange!” she said without hesitation, and so it was. The coincidental clairvoyance of this child is becoming a little too frequent to ignore. She told me before visiting her grandfather on Sunday, as I was getting her off the toilet,”PopPop has a new NEW car!” I was aghast when we pulled into his drive way and lo and behold, there was his new minivan.

By the time we got to yellow, we just started rolling in the powder. The other two accompanying adults (hubs and my sister) started bombing us with color. I may have instigated this at one point, I can’t remember. We crossed the finish line all wearing smiles and A even got herself a medal. I’d say she ran a good third of the race, so probably about a mile. She did the rest in a combination of walking, strolling, riding on mom’s back and riding on dad’s shoulders. I highly recommend this 5K for families with little ones. A was so excited at the start to be surrounded by copious amounts of enthusiastic people. She kept saying “I see a LOT of people RUNNING!!!”

I’m still picking glitter out of her hair and we’re still blowing blue boogies out of our noses, but it was totally worth it. I’ve done this race twice now. Once while about 5 months pregnant, and once with a 2.5 year old and both times it was very fun. More fun with a toddler. For those concerned, they do offer a leaf blower cleaning at the end of the race and I’d say 99% comes off with your first shower. I hope you find yourself at a HAPPY 5K at some point in your life!

Stay tuned for a post about all the pants/shorts/pj pants I’ve been making A and a tutorial on making crib/toddler bed sheets (that’s so easy that it’s more like a before and after than a tutorial).

– Cynthia