Monday, January 7, 2008

Playground Adventures

Soen holding Sadie on the recliner swing.


Owing to weather that is nice enough to beckon us outside but isn't yet warm enough for the beach, we've been spending a lot of time at the playground recently. Here are some of the highlights.

1. Due to Sadie's tough-gal persona and her complete lack of fear, she wants to do everything her brother does, including going down even the highest, spiraling slides on her own. The first time we let her do this we were a little apprehensive, since she is just 16 months old. But she is quite capable. She's more physically advanced than Soen was at this age. In fact, she's more capable than other 16-month-olds. It's fun to see the looks on other parents' faces as she goes flying down these slides. They go launching themselves to save her, but she laughs her way down the slide and gets off just fine. Then the parents ask us, "How old is she?"

2. Trying to lose Gromit. So Gromit (our most annoying cat) has taken to climbing into the car every time we get in. One day as I was taking the kids to one park, she climbed in as was fighting me on trying to get her out of the car. Fine, I thought. I'll bring you to the park with us. Well, this was fun for a while. She got out of the car, promptly took a dump in the woods, and followed us over to the playground. Then just before we were ready to leave, she was gone. We looked for her for a few minutes but she was no where to be found. So we left her. Luckily, I escaped the dog house by finding her later in the day on my third search and rescue attempt. Frankly, she barely seemed to recognize me. Dumb cat. And to think I was actually starting to miss her.

3. Soen as bad influence. We were playing at this one jungle gym and this little 2-year-old boy came over to play with us, accompanied by his parents and grandparents. Well, this little boy naturally wanted to do everything Soen was doing. His grandmother even said how nice it was for him to follow Soen around, and how cute my kids were. Then Soen started in with his "poopy butt" running commentary, and his new favorite expression: "What the?" So the boy's mom would ask Soen a question he didn't know, like "How old is your sister?" and he would respond with, "What the?" Most parents might have been embarrassed by this sort of thing, but I just thought it was funny. Frankly, every time he says "what the?" it cracks me up. I try not to laugh, but what are you gonna do?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

re #3. I think one of these days, probably very soon, the parents and or grandparents won't think it's so funny - but rather rude - and you will be forced to stop laughing! he's just pushing the envelope again.......dee dee

Anonymous said...

note from sadie and soen's mother:
1) Sadie is fearless and FIFteen months old.
2)Soen gets ignored during the "what the" line of discourse and laughed at later by his stunned and bemused and (let's face it, amused) parents
3) gromit is about to get a trip back to the playground. dumb cat.
me

Anonymous said...

Adler started saying "what the" recently as well. Soooo, either this is a developmental thing or our boys are just way sassy?

FIFteen, SIXteen...what the? Glad to hear, I can't remember Sylvia's age these days and the other day I got Adler's bday wrong.

Go ahead, have them take my Mommy card away...I need a vacation.
Speaking of which...Was looking at the map, do you think Shenandoah Valley is halfway point between us?

Marianne

Anonymous said...

a 16 month old on STEROIDS wants to do everything her older brother does!