a day at the park

I have too many pictures, but not enough time to process and post them all, so I'm going to post them in bits and pieces. These were taken yesterday, on a trip to the park - this is the little park that convinced Mike this apartment was right for us, because it's practically in our backyard. We go almost every day. The first is Joan, on her favourite ride, the swing. As soon as we turn the corner and come into view of the park, she starts to giggle, because she knows she'll get to swing.

John, striking a pose for the camera

The park's main attraction - loose dirt stuff for digging, and running one's fingers through. It's actually ground-up old tires. My house is constanty filled with tiny bits of rubber.

My little construction crew

Some quiet time with Dad before bed last night.

More pictures coming in the next few days. I've tried to be more diligent about keeping the camera charged and ready, and it's paid off. Now I just need to log some time in "the dungeon" to get them posted.

Things here have been alright. We finally checked out Alberta's equivalent of the Early Year's Centre. They aren't nearly as good, or as plentiful. But they do exist. John has dubbed it "The Fun Place." As in, all day, every day, he whines "can we pleeeeeeeease go to The Fun Place today? Pleeeeease?"

Unfortunately for John, they aren't open very often, or for very long. We have two, two-hour windows in the week for open play time, which is kind of sad. But they have a few other things. They have free swimming lessons on Mondays, and they have an open gym time on Friday afternoons, where they bring out the tricycles and soccer stuff, and let the kids run wild, followed by a snack and a random literacy activity. We went to the pre-schooler program last week, and both kids LOVED it! John got to play with trucks to his heart's content, and Joan spent a couple of hours with me, filling containers with blocks and dumping. She even got to sit in an excersaucer, which is like a baby amusement park, and she REALLY loved that. The blocks and other things were better for her, though, because she was using both sides to play. I haven't seen such a big smile on her face for that long, like, ever. Lots of fun! John had fun, too, but he found the other kids a bit frustrating. A lot of them were younger - the pamphlet says it's for 4-5 year-olds, but we were told we could come, because he was close, but there were lots of really young kids there, like 2-year-olds. The language barrier was an issue. It's an inner-city centre, hosted by the YWCA, so it was a lot more multicultural than I expected. Very few of the kids spoke any english. One spoke only french. Several only spoke Chinese. One other spoke english, but you'd never know it, because he didn't speak at all. Some of the others were too young to tell what language they could do. I didn't realize this until near the end, because the teachers still spoke to the kids in english, they just didn't respond to anything. It was like a class of mutes, except for John, who was trying his darnedest to strike up some meaningful conversation. At the end, they gave them a little snack - they sat in a circle, eating crackers and peaches. John asked everyone in turn, "do you like peaches?" When he got no response, he'd move on to the next person. The teacher was good, though, and gave him a very full answer of "Normally, I don't like peaches, but these ones are very good, aren't they?" He nodded yes, and he seemed happy with that.

On the way home, he commented on it. "We didn't talk at the Fun Place," he said. "I know," I told him. "Most of those kids can't speak english." "But I can speak it!" he said. We might try to find a different one, not so close to the core, so he has other kids to converse with. But most of them are so far away, way, way up in the north end.

We were going to back this week, but John's had quite a bad accident. While I was doing dishes one morning, he was jumping on the couch, even though he knows he's not supposed to, and he fell, very hard. Hard enough that it knocked in one of his front teeth a little, and turned the insides of his lips black. He's still swollen now, six days later. We think the tooth will be okay, but he's still asking for his food to be broken into little pieces, so it's hard to tell. He lets Mike look at it, but not me. But Mike says it's looking better every day. He's still in a lot of pain, but it seems to be mostly his lip that's the cause. He fell while holding a pen, which dug a big gouge through his bottom lip, and seemed to go inside his mouth to cause a lot of the damage to his upper lip. You can kind of see it in some of the photos up there - you can see the swelling in the left side of his face still. He actually refused to leave the house for a few days after. He spent a lot of time on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, whimpering. But he also refused to take any Tylenol, because it's "baby medicine". But he's asking to go places now, like the park and the Fun Place, so I'm sure he's feeling better. From what little he lets me see, I think he'll be okay, but the decision to go to a dentist or not is being left up to Mike, because he's the only one John trusts to lift up that sore, puffy lip. (Probably, because Mike keeps telling John that I want to pull his tooth out. That might have a bit to do with it.)

Speaking of baby teeth, Joan has a new one, with another on the way. That brings her up to nine - almost 10. This latest one is giving her a lot of grief. She clutches her cheek and screams now and then. She's drooling like crazy and is in constant search of soft flesh to bite - usually mine! Hopefully, it will pop through soon.

Anyway, better go. I have more to say, but have run out of time, and buggy Blogger has already erased half of this post, so I'm not going to stick around. But I'll be back!