Today was the first day that has really
felt like summer to me. We were going to meet some friends at a
field to play soccer, but Lex protested, so we didn’t. A little
later I suggested trying a new playground and going to the
store to buy what we needed to plant a sunflower house. Both
kids were pretty excited about that! Lex even got dressed for
the occasion. After the summer ritual of sunscreen, hats,
sandels, snacks, etc. we headed out.
The
playground was at a grade school and the kids had a lot of fun.
Lately I’ve been thinking that our usual playgrounds are
getting a little small for the kids… or, more likely, they
are getting too big for the toddler playgrounds! This one had
some challenging features and the kids lasted all of 40 minutes
before they were asking for snacks :)
This thing is pretty cool. You
hang on to the handles and run on the wheel. Lex loved it and
Eve did it really well the very first time, but she couldn’t
seem to do it again.
At the top of the
slide.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtFsi9WcfYM]
We got back in the car and went to
the feed supply store to buy compost, seeds, and fertilizer.
While the nice man was loading 50lb bags into my car, another
nice man let the kids play with the chickens in the coop out
front. Lex LOVED it! He giggled and chased the poor chickens
everywhere. I thought one might keel over of a heart attach,
but the guy said that they are pretty used to kids. Luckily! He
told Lex that if could catch one he could take it home. Umm…
NO!! Luckily Lex didn’t even come close to catching one!
Then we came home for lunch and naps, and in
the afternoon we headed outside to plant our sunflower garden.
I got this book, Gardening
with Children, awhile ago and during the winter Lex
and I decided that we wanted to plant a sunflower house this
summer. We’ve been talking about it for many months and he was
super excited to finally do it (ok, I’ll confess, I was too!)
You dig a rectangular outline and plant alternating sunflower
seeds and morning glory seeds. The sunflowers grow tall and
straight. The morning glories climb the sunflowers, weaving
back and forth to create walls, and when they get tall enough
you can route them across the top to form a roof. It looks
pretty cool. Of course we didn’t do a very good job of
following directions, didn’t have quite enough seeds or
compost, and dug the trench much too deep…. so we’ll see what
we get. Worst case I figure we’ll get some pretty flowers, and
best case it will resemble a fort for the kids to play in. We
put it in the back yard behind the swing set, where it’s very
sunny and flat. If nothing else we had a fun experience and Lex
learned that “digging a trench is very hard work!” :)
Digging the trench. Neither of
them were terribly good at digging, and arguably neither was I,
but we all had a great time.
Here is Eve sitting in the dirt.
You can see the outline where we planted
seeds.