The usual

Now that Isaac is mobile, it is much easier to enjoy parks without fear of splinters in his hands from crawling on the wood chips. Don't ask. We have been trying to frequent a playground near our house much more, and though it is fun, we must admit it is somewhat boring without our beloved Mindy and Clayton. Sigh. Playgrounds are good, but they are much more fun when mommies have other big people to talk to.

But we do have our fun. Especially now that there's the whole sandbox gig.


It has been raining, though, and today the sand was wet and sticky. At first it stuck in clumps in Isaac's hand when he picked it up, and this somehow gave him the brilliant idea that he should try to eat it. He plopped a big sand-nugget right in his mouth and immediately started screaming, like "MAAAAA! Get it OUT!" I ran him over to the stroller with the wipes, and he even stuck out his tongue when I started wiping his face to make sure I was really focusing on the problem areas.

Then we monkeyed around on the jungle gym. Not a wee jungle gym like the killer-awesome playground, but our standard:



A cute/heart-breaking anecdote -- we always find that we are the only ones at the playground without a ball, which is a complete disaster because Isaac has a kind of deep, mystical connection with balls of all kinds. More on that later. I beg and plead with him to throw the ball to me, and sometimes he complies, but rarely does he ever give me the ball to throw to him. This kind of "yes! play with me now!" behavior is exclusively reserved for Dada, AKA Lord of Fun. I am boring ol' Maw, although my presence is greatly preferred at mealtime, owie-time, or bedtime. Anyway, we're at the playground...I'm stalking Isaac and watching a gaggle of moms sitting in the grass and cackling, away from their older kids who are bouncing around like they should be. Suddenly, a DAD shows up, I must admit a rather rare sighting for this park, with his ~4 year old, and New Dad watches his kid play in the sandbox, sitting right on the edge as I prefer to do. As soon as Isaac notices this Dad-figure, Isaac walks directly to this complete stranger and hands him his ball, then walking a convenient throwing-distance away. It was completely clear that Isaac knew this dude was a Dad, and therefore assumed that he would be most suitable for playing pitch-and-catch. Forget that Mom character. I told our Dada this, and, poor guy, it made him sad.

So back to the "ball" topic -- why is it suddenly that every time the diaper is off, even for a second, his hand goes STRAIGHT for the frank & beans? I can't help but visualize the baby mental dialog: "Oh, thank GAWD that crazy woman let you fellas out for some air!" or "Ooooh, here's some loose skin -- let's pull on it!" It's made only worse by the fact that I change him on a lambskin rug. Let's hope I'm not driving him to posing in Playgirl.