Two Days at the Park

Nathan and I have had lots of fun at the park during our last two visits!  A week ago Friday, Nathan and I hit the park while we were waiting for Brian to get off of work and start vacation.  I took this first picture of him on the swing, which I have to say, is much more difficult with a DSLR than with a regular point and shoot camera (unless there's something I'm missing - maybe I should google it to make sure), but I was able to get this good shot.

Nathan is so much more excited about swinging these days!  He giggles and kicks his legs and just has a wonderful time!

Then we headed over to the playground equipment, not sure that we would find anything interesting for Nathan to do.  Boy was I wrong!  Nathan had a blast standing up and sitting down at the bars, making sure to keep tabs on all the passing traffic.  He was very interested in watching all the cars that drove by, periodically pointing to them to make sure I didn't miss the excitement (it's looking like he may have inherited the Kornrumpf car loving gene!)

 

Nathan and I headed back to the playground this afternoon, again loving the swing and watching cars from the playground equipment. Then we tried the slide again...

OK, I have to go off on a sidebar story here, because its a funny memory that I never posted.  A few months ago, Brian, Nathan and I went to this park for some family fun time.  Brian and I took turns pushing Nathan on the swings while the other swung next to him.  Then we headed over to the playground equipment, where we "helped" Nathan slide down the little slide.  Nathan didn't get the concept of sliding and was trying to stop himself using his feet.  So I got the great idea of going down the slide with him.  But I wasn't content to go down the little slide, oh no, I wanted to go down the big slide with Nathan!  The big slide was one of those covered slides, and when I sat down at the top, I realized that I was too tall to sit up while sliding down.  No matter, I grabbed on to Nathan, lied down and off we went!  On the way down, I remember thinking "We're going much faster then I expected!"  Then we got to the bottom, and I SHOT out of the slide.  Not able to get my feet under me fast enough, and with my arms still securely holding Nathan to me, I landed SMACK on my back and bottom and REALLY knocked the wind out of myself (I may have said a bad word too).  Brian ran over and took Nathan from me, then helped me brush all the mulch off my back side.  Nathan was fine, but my back hurt pretty badly.  We called it a day after that, and I learned not to underestimate children's playground equipment.

Back to today.  After learning my lesson, I slid with Nathan down one of the little slides.  At the bottom, he had a big smile on his face.  I slid down once more with him and then let him try on his own (with me supporting him, of course).  He had a huge grin on his face at the bottom!  He slid down quite a few more times, until my arms started to hurt too much.

Then I sat him down at the bottom of the slide, and he played in the mulch for a good 15 to 20 minutes.  He would inspect the mulch to find the specific pieces of wood he wanted, then would hold them up for my approval, or hand them to me, or put them on my feet or on the bottom of the slide.  He started to accumulate quite a collection of wood pieces on the slide and I was reminded how both Brian (growing up) and my mom (currently) are big rock collectors.  Nathan may also be genetically doomed predisposed to collecting nature like his dad and Gran. We ended up staying at the park for almost an hour and a great time was had by all!