Celebratory Swinging

We finally had a nice, warm day yesterday, so to celebrate Alex's eight month birthday, we took him to Wilson Park. The baby swing was the first stop. He was a little unsure during the first couple of swings, looking like someone just had just socked him in the gut. But once he was able to catch his breath, he really started to enjoy the feeling of the cool breeze blowing through his hair.



Timothy and I took turns pushing him, cuz that's only fair.

My turn. I suppose we should've taken it easy on him considering this was only his first time in a "real" swing. But that's just not our style. Besides, he loves to be thrown in the air and tossed around, so we assumed our little adrenaline junkie would be willing to risk life and limb to catch some serious air.

After the swings, we tried the slide. We were pretty sure that A would try to launch himself over the side if we let him go alone, so I slid with him.

I'm not sure that he even noticed he was sliding he didn't have much of a reaction. Perhaps sliding with Mom was "embarrassing", that it's "something only sissies do", that he's "a big boy who could slide by himself, geez Mom, cut the cord already..."

So we gave him the opportunity to prove himself and let him go it alone in the tube slide. I did, however, lay him on his back before I shoved him down the hatch so he wouldn't fall backwards and crack his head open. I think he had a little more fun sliding by himself, because he immediately tried to claw his way back up the slide to try it again.

Instead, we tried to test Alex's arm strength by getting him to hang on the monkey bars. He was completely uninterested. I guess he just didn't want to show up the other kids that were failing to make it across. Way to show some humility, son.

The last thing we did before we left was sit Alex in the grass to see what he'd do. What he did was...well...he sat in the grass. I thought maybe he'd crawl around and explore things, considering he's never been remotely close to grass before, but no, he really wasn't too curious about it. I guess it's kind of similar to carpet, albeit carpet littered with sticks and dog poo. Hmmm, maybe he didn't want to crawl around and risk getting dog poo on his good pants...Yeah, that must be it.