The Squeal Deal

Four in the afternoon, dad gets home from work, Zane hasn’t napped yet, dad reads to him a bit and realizes this is a no-nap day. Off we go to the playground.

We get there and the first thing Zane encounters is one of his favorites: a crowd of noisy kids! A pack of squealing girls in this case, all going down the slide together in a huge, squealing pile. Zane was up there and in the pile before you could say “be careful.” He loves nothing more than rough housing with a pile of noisy kids. It’s like a magnet his compass must follow. Eventually all good things come to an end, or at least run off to another playground area without you, and Zane had to find other entertainments. He visited the High School Girl’s Tennis team and tried to play with some of their gear. He tried to abscond with someone’s scooter. He blew bubbles. Oh, and of course he played on the playground equipment off and on.

Eventually a big family came by (the same one he managed to mooch a pocketful of animal cookies from last week) and there was more running around and making noise, followed by Zane “sort of” asking for and getting a slice of Apple from them. I’m starting to think I should give these guys a gift certificate or something for all of the Zane feeding.

We wrapped up the afternoon at the playground with Zane going ballistic. Suddenly he had this surge of energy (and corresponding ebb in caution) and was climbing and jumping over everything. He jumped across all of the one foot high toadstools all by himself for the first time. He kind of leaned out and jumped onto a big corkscrew climbing thing for the first time. And he started hanging onto and swinging across the monkey bars. He’s not totally tuned into swinging from bar to bar yet but getting closer with each visit.