When you’re the parent of a preschooler, water parks are anything but relaxing.  You spend most of your time chasing your kids across hot pavement, wiping water out of their eyes with a towel or helping them dodge hairy men in the wave pool.  If you want to catch a break, the lazy river is your only hope.

I don’t know who invented this concept, but it’s brilliant.  The whole idea is to lay down on an inner tube and do nothing.  You float.  That’s it.  If your kid is a big enough to hold on to a tube, you can almost take a nap.

Unfortunately no one told my four-year-old this.  The second we hit the lazy river last week, she took off running.  I’d just settled into my tube when she bolted like an Olympic sprinter.  I wanted to yell, “Hey, this is the LAZY river.  That is not lazy!”

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