free play – Page 2 – little thoughts

The boys and I went to a new park this week, just a few miles south of our house. To our delight, behind the playground was a lake, complete with ducks!

{pretty}

Limerick absolutely loves birds and was completely captivated by the ducks. It took him a few tries to throw his pieces of bread into the water instead of just dropping them at his feet, but once he got it he didn’t want to stop.

{happy}

We fed the ducks at the end of our time at the park, after a couple hours of running and digging in the sun, and I was a bit worried that the boys would be too worn out to really enjoy it – but they were so excited about seeing all the birds that they got a second wind 🙂 I was amazed at how fast our small supply of bread heels disappeared into those ducks’ tummies.

{funny}

Tuesday was free ice cream cone day at Dairy Queen, and there happens to be a Dairy Queen within a block of our house, so I took the boys for their first ever ice cream cone experience. This little man was a bit overwhelmed by the cone in its pristine form, but he got all silly and happy once we reduced it down to more manageable proportions. Limerick was exactly the opposite: he plunged right into the tower of ice cream on the cone, uncaring of the creamy sticky mess all over his face, and ate quite a bit before deciding he was done, about halfway through the ice cream. The upshot of the adventure was that we had 3 good-sized cones and I ended up eating about 2 of them, between my own and helping the boys with theirs!

{real}

This little guy, while decidedly cute and happy, has also decided that it is ridiculously fun to run away from me and generally play keep-away when I call him. It is hard not to let it turn into a game every time, the way he laughs so mischievously as he scampers away! I’m having to enforce the rules a bit more strictly than I wish I had to – it’s like, if you would stay away from the road you could play anywhere in this whole huge area, but because you keep running towards the road with trouble on your face, thinking it’s a game, you’re going to have to sit with me or in the stroller. I feel like his need to test the boundaries keeps him from having as much fun as he otherwise could, which makes me sad for him.

My primary solution is to let him play, as much as possible, in areas where the boundaries are few and far between, so he doesn’t feel as much need to test: a playground where the road isn’t in sight, or where the road is on the other side of a fence; a child-safe backyard; the inside of our house or my parents’ house. In those settings, he can explore and play independently without the constant need for supervision or the shadow of a potential “no” interrupting his agenda.

Any other tips for what to do in places where I can’t control all those variables, and where the boundaries are simultaneously much tighter and much less clearly defined (for a 1.5yr old, anyway)?

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today!

The ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter were encouraging this week’s {phfr} to be about desk space, since an organized and clean desk is such a great jump start for productivity and clear thinking. Unfortunately, my desk is in a very dimly lit room and I didn’t have opportunity during the daylight hours to try to take a picture of it! So in the spirit of the link-up I cleaned and organized the horrible mess that was my desk and then enjoyed getting some HOA work done on the newly-emptied surface. It really does make a difference, having it clean!

{pretty}

We are in the height of citrus season here in the low desert, and my parents have quite a few trees, so on Monday afternoon we took some time to make orange marmalade, candied orange peels, and candied grapefruit peels. The jars in the picture above are of the orange syrup left over from boiling the peels – the flavor is quite strong and sweet and makes a good addition to different types of drinks. I think it would be good with just some sparkling water but my mom has an old-fashioned in mind 🙂 She’s not as much of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol as I am!

{happy}

Our garden has really become a play space. On Tuesday I watched my nephew and niece for a couple hours and they had a great time exploring the dirt and plants in the garden; I’m not sure who slipped this little construction crate under the cilantro, though! It looks like a little elfin summerhouse to me – I can just imagine the little people frolicking in the dappled green light under the leaves, and resting for the night in their hideaway.

{funny}

Because the weather has been so unseasonably warm, our little orange tree has begun budding already. Its branches are beginning to encroach rather significantly into the yard, but it had been trimmed ruthlessly and ignorantly before we bought the house and suffered a lot of sunburn as a result, so we’re giving it a few years to heal before we try to trim it again. So, some of the branches are at just the right height for Limerick to explore, and he’s been quite intrigued by the new flower buds. In fact, he’ll stand at the tree, oblivious to the world, picking all the flower buds off, saying “flower bud!” each time and then dropping them on the ground or into a cup. Some of the fruits (flowers?) of his labor he then put on the edge of the raised bed garden, for no reason known outside of his own small head…

{real}

If I had gotten a “before” picture of my desk, that would have been my {real} picture for the week! I had pre-Christmas decorations, old mail, HOA papers, the remnants of a Christmas craft, some chocolate and essential oils, and some items destined for Goodwill, all piled up on a table no more than 30″ square. Even the “after” picture could be {real}, though, tucked away as the desk is by my husband’s school desk, his weights and bench, the vacuum, and a couple large bookshelves… all of our random things seem to have ended up in the same place, which is also the only way to get into the backyard, so there’s always a bit of chaos going on. But it is cleaner than it was, and that makes me happy 🙂

Go check out the rest of the link-up!

Tag: free play

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – feeding the ducks!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – random pieces of life