Southwestway Park

We went to try out a new park the other day. Erick wanted to play disc golf, but we couldn't figure out where it was, so we just played on the playground and then took a hike. In my opinion, the playground was really intended for big kids. The actual slides were very challenging to get to, but Piper persevered and climbed up the chain ladder with a little help.

She did make a friend however, and had fun running around with her, and then blowing bubbles with her and her little brother. Erick and I were debating about how old the kids were. Piper was all about playing with the girl who appeared to me to be about 4-5. She was barely taller than Piper, but her speech was more sophisticated. The little boy I guessed to be barely 2, maybe younger based on his movements and speech. Piper wanted nothing to do with him, when normally she likes to play with the boys, and I attributed it to him being younger than her. Erick thought the girl was about 3 and the boy the same as I guessed. I finally asked their father how old they were, and he told me the girl had just turned 5 in January which confirmed my suspicions. The boy as it turned out, was exactly the same age as Piper, which really surprised me.

Afterwards we took a hike through the woods to "look for bears", but of course we didn't find any. Piper collected her usual stash of sticks, and pointed out all the flowers and bugs to us along the way.

Climbing to the Top

We made another trip to Monkey Joe's yesterday. It was fun for me to see how much she has grown since the last time I went with her. Since she can properly jump now, she had more fun bouncing on the inflatables. She also can climb up the slides by herself and we don't have to carry her up. As usual, she loved playing and was sad to go home. You could tell she was tired though. Just look at the above picture where she was practically asleep on one of the rides.

Here she is climbing up the ladder all by herself and going down the slide.

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Don't Tell Me I'm Too Little

You'd never know by looking at her, that she's only 19 months old. Everyone always thinks she's older, especially because she is so tall. So it kinda shocked me the other day at the park when she wanted to climb up one of the angled ladders, and this other mom said she was too small and would have to grow a little before she could do it. I just smiled sweetly and told her that she might be surprised at how well she could climb. I knew she could in fact climb it because I had watched her do it at another park. Yes, my little monkey has no concept of fear, and scrambled up the whole way with mommy spotting her. Did I mention that I love proving other people wrong. :)

**This is not the exact angled ladder she climbed up. The one she climbed had another horizontal rung at the very top, which caused a little hiccup in her climbing even though she made it to the ledge eventually.

Easter Eggs

We decorated our Easter eggs tonight. I wanted something easy that only took one step. Have you seen the Easter coloring options lately? There's glitter, wax, stickers, plastic wraps, and more. Our kit was a basic dye pack with oil. It gave the eggs a tie-dyed look. All I had to to was dunk the eggs in a couple cups of water and we were done. Oh, and I also had to remove Piper from the top of the table every five seconds, and wipe up the spilled water, and save the eggs from being cracked or dropped, and so on.

Monkey Joe's

I have been waiting for a couple months for Monkey Joe's to open. They just built one right down the street from where we live, and I was very excited to take Piper to the grand opening today. It was busy, but not too crowded. I like that they have big kid equipment, as well as dedicated toddler areas for the little ones. Not that it stopped Erick from taking her on all the big attactions and slides. She had a great time climbing and jumping all over everything.

Here's a montage with all the day's fun-filled excitement. My favorite clip is when she slides down the giant slide all by herself.

Please stop climbing through my kitchen window

Yet another example of my monkey child's climbing abilities. She has discovered that there is a real window on her play kitchen, and how convenient it is to simply crawl through it. Why bother to walk around when you can just go straight through to the other side. She is pretty adept at getting herself out of tricky situations, and even when she was stuck on the counter, figured out how to get down all by herself.

Daredevil

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Boy does this child like to climb. So much that she scares me to death at times. Like tonight, she was using her book basket to climb into the chair. And, she was rocking the chair by herself. Then she figures out that she can climb from the chair over the table to the couch. Yes, I was right there, you can see the camera jerk when I thought she was going to fall out of the chair once. You seriously have to watch her every second!