At the Park

We have had great weather lately for playing outside. We found a local park that has a couple of toddler swings. This was Ben's first experience with swings at a playground. He wasn't so sure about it at first (I'll post a video later), but it only took a minute for him to figure out he liked it.



I think Mike had just as much fun on the playground as Ben did.

I thought Ben might like the big, colorful playground equipment. Not so much. He did find lots of cool sticks that are apparently more interesting than the sticks in our yard. He also liked watching the bigger kids playing, and he got to see a very friendly dog.

Ben is really digging books this week. He is even bringing books to us to read to him. Although sometimes he walks away after the second page.

"Goodnight Moon" is one of his favorites. And we've read it so many times that it doesn't matter when he flips the pages all over the place because we have it memorized.

He is fascinated by my teeth, especially when I'm talking.

This trip to the park was just the boys. Mike said Ben found even more sticks.

All that playground equipment, and where does Ben go? Down to the chain link fence by the road. There are more sticks down there.

We did have several days last week where there were threats of thunderstorms. One morning I took Ben to a small playground on base, hoping to beat the rain. It was overcast so I didn't have to worry about too much sun, and it was windy...Ben loves the wind now. A year ago, he couldn't stand it and acted like he couldn't breathe when a breeze came by. This park was near an empty pavilion & he ended up spending most of his time running around on the concrete. He did explore the playground a bit. It is surrounded by a very low plastic fence that he couldn't step over. But he could step up onto the plastic ramp at the entrance and thought it was an awesome toy: he kicked it, rolled around on it, and beat it with sticks. Yes, he found more sticks.

Ben caught his first stomach bug yesterday. He had strange eating habits; he ate a ton of acorn squash but wouldn't eat much else for dinner. He went to bed as usual, but this morning he slept in until 9:30. We checked on him a lot to make sure he was okay. He seemed fine when he finally got up, but when I tried to feed him some pumpkin bread for breakfast, he took one bite and threw it up. He was very upset. This was the first time I've seen him throw up since he's been off formula. He ate some plain saltines & took a few sips of water. He never did throw up again, and later in the day he started eating regular food and drank a bunch of milk. I'm relieved that he seems to be feeling better already.