Psychotomy

The last few evenings we’ve (DK and I) been going up to the playground after dinner. The current setup is K’s walk with DK in the stoller, home and dinner, then DK and I go for a walk. And all week he’s been choosing the playground.

Wednesday (Thursday?) he started going up the big kids playgym. They’ve got two of them. One that says it’s for ages 2-5 and one 5-12. So of COURSE he likes climbing up the 5-12! So he goes up and then had the bright idea that he could turn around and back onto the big slide, like it was a staircase. And then he’d slide down. Absolutely loved that idea! Kept getting to the bottom, running back to the stairs, climbing up an doing it again.

Unfortunately, then he forgot that plan the next day. So he’d go up, start trying to climb down it like stairs, realizing that that wasn’t working, turn around, come off the slide and then start looking to walk off the side of the structure. From ~6 maybe 7′ … And of COURSE the structure is open on BOTH sides there. Four sides — one is the slide, one is the stairs down a level, one is a slide pole, and one is a ladder. He seems to prefer trying to come off on the ladder side :/

Today he kept (thankfully) coming down a level and playing at hte top of the lower slide. Which I can actually reach up from the outside and take his hand and coax him out onto it. Not sure why he suddenly changed his mind about the big slide, but it’s not like I’m going to push him on it. I just wish he’d quit climbing to the top to turn around and come back down ;)

We also hit the big-kid swings today. Largely because I’m a very hands off kindof dad. I let him choose where he wants to play and what he wants to do, I’m just there to make sure he doesn’t crack his skull. Which causes trouble because all the other dads follow their 5 yr olds up the big structure, and then whenever I reach up to barrier him from coming over the side they think I’m reaching for him. I’m sure they all think I’m nuts, I let him climb up on his own, then I stand at the bottom trying to pick him off the side until they come to my rescue and hand him down, and then I turn and let him do the same thing again. Bah.

Anyway, big kid swings. I sat him down after he insisted on climbing onto them (he loves swings, so it wasn’t surprising, honestly). And i’m trying to hold his hands on the chains and push a little and suddenly FOOSH! he slips forward off the front, his hands pop out and he’s flat on his back in the dirt. With the biggest damned grin on his face. And he insists on climbing up to do that AGAIN! Only this time he falls before I even finish getting him settled, and he lands face down, getting his eyes and mouth full of dust most likely. And he did NOT like that. So we moved on back to the slide :o

Apparently he’s very unusual, in his exploration and his friendliness. One parent said her kid (older than DK) hadn’t been out amongst other kids very often so she kept fussing at her to wait her turn (while DK is trying to decide if he’s going down slide A, mom is telling the little girl to wait her turn to go past him to slide B. Oh well, sorry, DK isn’t really going to mind, he’s undecided). Obviously there’s the part where I let him choose his own activities. Just seems like if I want him to play, I should let him decide how. Otherwise it’s more like homework :o

Posted in: DK by attriel /