watch me play

I was pleasantly surprised to discover a mild temperature and nice breeze when I went outside around lunchtime. I fixed lunch for Dennis and myself and then loaded us up to head to the playground. Dennis is able to do more and more at the playground and I was so amazed to see him climb to the top of the highest slide and sit himself down and push off to slide down it. When he was at the top of this same slide, Gran and Pop showed up at the playground to see him play. He began giggling and grinning hugely at them as soon as he spotted them walking into the playground. He quickly plopped down on the slide and slid down to them, delighted as always to see them. He showed off all his climbing and sliding skills for them and they had fun catching him and then pushing him while he was in the swing.

He made a friend at the playground, another little boy who was a little older. He had an extra truck that he let Dennis play with in the sand, and he wanted Dennis to slide down all the slides either right before him or right after him. He also wanted all of us to watch him slide and climb on the play equipment. I guess he heard us praising Dennis for his abilities and knew that he could do so much more and wanted some praise as well! We were happy to comply.

Gran treated us to some seriously decadent chocolate ice cream from Publix this afternoon after we picked some pears from our tree to take to her. It was a pretty good exchange. The poor pear tree is weighed down, some branches nearly to the ground, with pears (Bartlett, I believe), and many of them are not quite ripe enough to pick. The ones today were very close and Gran confirmed their deliciousness. I am overrun with the things since I didn't even think about pruning the tree. Some farmer I am! This happened with my tomato crop years ago and I had more of them than I could have eaten in two years. Since we are planning a big fall garden for the greenhouse this year, I am going to have to learn to care for the plants properly! I am looking forward to teaching Dennis about gardening. We have a giant greenhouse and will be able to garden through the winter. His apple tree is growing well but is still too young to produce fruit. He loves flowers and points them out to me whenever he sees them, and he likes to touch different plants and flowers to see how they feel. So far we've managed to avoid poison ivy and its nefarious cousins, thank goodness.

Of course we spent time in his room playing with the cars, and he helped Daddy clean up his room tonight before bed. He watched Mommy cook dinner and clean in the kitchen until his Daddy got home, and he heard David get in the shower. He ran back to the bathroom laughing, saw that the shower was occupied and in use, shouted "Da da!" and ran to the shower door and slid it open. It's a good thing he shouted a warning or David might have been in for a rather rude surprise!

Our quest-to-be-greener has been going well. We stopped at Whole Foods last week and got paper towels and trash bags made from recycled materials. This was too expensive to be feasible before, but now Whole Foods has their own brand name and the products are equivalent to the Seventh Generation ones in biodegradability and use of sustainable materials. We especially like the diapers. They are bigger than the Seventh Generation ones and leak less. And more of them come in the package, so they are cheaper. All of the Whole Foods brand products are very reasonably priced, and I didn't pay any more for the trash bags than I would have for any trash bags. The paper towels were a little bit more, but still very reasonable. The only problem is having to drive so far to get to Whole Foods! We try to combine all our northbound errands into one trip now. I really like the new Clorox GreenWorks products as well. We had bought them for the camper so that we wouldn't be polluting the campgrounds, and now I am using them at home as well--they work well, have less chemicals, and smell pleasant. This is especially good since Dennis likes to 'help' me clean now, and he likes to spray the bottle and wipe as well. It's nice that these cleaners are not as toxic for him as far as touching is concerned, not that we're going to turn him loose with the cleaning products for several years yet. His favorite cleaning tool is still the broom--he loves to sweep it through the house, even though it's twice as tall as he is and then some. It will be a few years yet before Dennis knows or cares about the environment, but we are hoping to set a good example for him and keep him healthier by choosing organic foods and natural products whenever we can. He happens to like this planet pretty well!