Some mud!

Today, the little one and I decided to go for a walk around the block. It's quite commical to see us. She carries her purse and her waterbottle and I struggle with the dog. The Block takes us about 15 minutes. Today, we were picking up rocks and sticks and noticing lots of mud. There is this one road that has no sidewalk and Miss Independent doesn't like to hold my hand so I have to usually force her in the grass so the dog and I are not in the road. Well, today the grass was muddy so I told her to walk higher up on the lawn with the mud seperating the two of us and I was on the edge of the road and grass. This plan worked fine until she spotted the big trucks up ahead and started to gleeful run towards them. She got down to the road and walked pretty close to me and the mud. In between her enthusiasm for reaching the trucks, she took moments to look at the mud. She'd say, "mommy, whaas that?" I would say, "it's mud". We'd walk some more. Then she'd say, "mommy, whaas that?" I'd say, "it's mud". We'd continue walking. Then she said, "mommy, whaas that?" Ah...the persistance of a 2 years old, I turned to say, "it's mu...? This time she had completly stepped in it. Her entire shoe went from pretty pink to barfy brown in seconds. At this point we were about 10 feet in front of the 3 city workers taking a smoke break standing in front of the big trucks. I told Chloe to keep walking with the mud. But seriously, folks, it was like 2 inches high off her shoe. It kind of resembled a little mud pom-pom on her toe and it extended back to her pants and socks. Well, of course, she wasn't about to go one more step so I knelt down and calmy wiped the mud of her shoe and onto the road. It wasn't until this time that I noticed that the mud on the side of the road was very brown and the "mud" on her shoe was not so dark brown. I was halfway through the cleaning, with the laughs of the workers behind me, when the thought occured to me that this mud may just be something other than mud. We were standing up wind so I didn't get a whiff of anything strange but that doesn't mean anything because my smellers aren't what they used to be. I just kept wiping till little Chloe Blue was satisfied and then we went on our way. i got to the next block before I dared sniff sniff my little finger and much to my relief...it was just some mud!