We’ve been to the playground every day this weekend (I’m counting Friday as part of the weekend). B is starting to really into climbing on play structures and going down slides, although I still prefer it if no one else is around. Too many wild and crazy five-year-olds running around make me nervous. And you know what’s weird? There’s often no one else around this particular playground.
Friday was a pretty nice day, though, so it got a little crowded. Among the other kids playing there was a little girl with a large ziplock bag full of little plastic trucks. B ran up to her and she handed him one. Her dad started interfering.
“Can you SHARE that TRUCK?” he asked, and I thought he was asking her, but then he said, “Did you say PLEASE? Say PLEASE.” Um, are you talking to my kid? She forced it on him – he doesn’t even want your cheap truck. Except apparently he does, because I had to chase him around the playground and then trick him to get it back. I wanted to give it back to the little girl, because this unfinished transaction was making me supremely uncomfortable.
The dad asked me how old B was. “He’s 22 months,” I said. The dad told me that “Maddy just turned one in May.” Holy cow, I was thinking, she is a huge and much advanced 15-month-old. I stole a glance at Beau. “Oh, two, I mean two,” he corrected. Whew.
I couldn’t handle being around them anymore, with their pressure to have nice manners and their kids with trendy names (their son’s name was like Aerys or something), so I pretended like we had to go home and start dinner (true) immediately (less true) and we left. Luckily we were there before them so they didn’t know we had only been there for about 25 minutes.
On Saturday, there was only one other little girl there, a 4-year-old who said, “Hi, what’s your name?” and when B said something incomprehensible back to her, she just looked at me with a confused look on her face. Adorable. Later, she asked me if she could play with him. Also adorable. Her mom said, “You have to ask him first if he wants a hug.” Then to us, “She’s a hugger.” Later, B went up to her and hugged her from behind. Everyone seemed chill about it.
Today, we met a mom with a 20-month-old girl. The two kids didn’t actually interact as much as I would have expected. But maybe we’ll run into them again. Today was a pretty wet day, and the slides had little pools at the bottom. We decided to go for it anyway, and put B down a slide. I’m glad I was ready for him at the bottom because he shot down that thing like he was greased up. He seemed to like it.
I remember long lazy weekends of sleeping in, reading, watching Law & Order: SVU, and doing not much else. But this is fun too. (Actually yesterday I spent all of naptime ignoring toys on the floor and dishes in the sink, and I lay in bed and read The Clan of the Cave Bear. That was nice.)
The Cameraphone Diaries 