Three Hours at the Playground

Yesterday, we spent over three hours at a playground a few towns away. My directive from Mommy was "get them to run around out of doors," and I think the mission was accomplished, to quote a great banner.

Of course, it took hours to get them out the door. The boys got their borscht, then Madeleine needed to be spoon-fed hers, the famous recurrent search for Daniel's shoes, looking for a few good diapers... Within minutes of hitting the road, Madeleine and Daniel were asleep, which meant that the ride would be rather longer than Ian would have preferred. However, some time later, Ian konked out as well, so it took us roughly 75 minutes to make a 40 minute trip. However, somehow all of us got a modicum of relaxation out of the rolling hiatus.

The park was perfect. Baseball with an "all-star" little-league game underway, between, of course, the "American League" and the "National League,"; a hotdog stand with drinks for everyone; a bathroom with running water; Russians to talk to (for me), and, best of all, a complex wooden playground structure of towers and slides and all kinds of hiding spots, newly renovated. This is the place they call "the wooden playground." And not a bad populace for mingling - much more sociable than the standard American playground, which meant the children made friends and played tag, etc.

There was a collection of five teen-agers - three girls and two boys - and Daniel at one point preferred hanging out with them, watching them as they sat on the swings, and occasionally making his own, highly-congruous contributions to their conversations, which they seemed to enjoy. At one point, they were counting for a game of hide-and-seek, and when they got to "five," Daniel blurted out that exceptional integer along with the counting agent, and added, "I get to say 'Five' because that's my age!" At another point, apparently one of the girls had thrown into the air, and then caught on the way down, a bottle of some atrocious red soda - something along the lines of "Tahitian Treat," because suddenly Daniel asked, "Hey - can I have a turn throwing the bottle up in the air?" The girl, clearly amused, said, "Sure!" and tossed him the bottle. At that point, Daniel stood by the swingset and, with tremendous gusto, tossed that half-full bottle of red food coloring and sugar into the air, for a few minutes, squatting with excitement as he poised to catch it on the way down, looking like an outfielder in the World Series throwing his entire mind and spirit into the task of calculating where that all-important fly-ball would land - only, unlike his major league colleagues, Daniel had a gigantic grin the entire time. Eventually, with the teenagers' permission, Daniel picked up a baseball mitt off the ground, which greatly enhanced his ability to catch those fiercely flying soda-bottle drives.

As we got to the car, and I was putting Madeleine into her seat, Ian discovered that Daniel was "eating" something: "Daddy, Daniel has something green in his mouth; it smells like tapiokee [sic]." Soon he followed up that it smelled like mint, which somehow made me much mre anxious. Of course, Ian undertook the work of chasing down the tapiokee-eater, prying his mouth open, and extracting a wad of green chewing gum.

I somehow find it hard to believe that Daniel was the first person in the world to work on that piece of gum.

Of course, upon questioning, Daniel said that he "found" the gum over by the baseball field, and that it was in a wrapper. I'm still not convinced, and neither is Ian. However, since Daniel and Ian both handled it - Ian's hands covered with the extracted contraband, they both got an extra water-bottle-powered hand-washing at the side of the car before we headed home, in a near-perfect ending to an excellent day at the park.

(June 18, 2011)