31 Days - Playground

This post is part of my Thirty-One Days with a Two-Year-Old series.

This beauty of a playground is located just a couple of miles away from us. It's close enough to walk, if we want to make a very long excursion of it. (Truthfully, the walk there isn't horrible, but the walk back, after playing for an hour or more, is very long.)

The playground was built in 1987 (it's just a little younger than me!). It's the classic wooden playground that is becoming harder and harder to find nowadays. Sure, you run the risk of getting a splinter (though it's so well used that the wood is pretty smooth - we haven't had a splinter yet), and you'll fall onto gravel rather than foam or wood chips, but this type of playground is so much more fun to play on than the small metal and plastic playgrounds that are being built now. (Also, this particular one is perfectly designed for playground tag. Unfortunately, none of the other adults want to play it with me and the kids all run faster than me and can slip through all of the cubby holes to keep from being tagged.)

Piper-girl absolutely loves going to the playground. She'll run all around, throw herself down the slides, and play with any other kids who happen to be there at the same time, following big kids around in particular. Needless to say, going to the playground is a great way to burn off energy!

When Piper-girl was younger and less stable on her feet, we had to follow her around while she climbed on the play structure.* (That wasn't as easy as it sounds - this playground has many small spaces that are difficult for an adult to navigate, even one who is only 5ft 2in.) Now that she's more stable, I just try to keep her mostly in my line of sight while I stay on the ground. She can navigate almost the entire structure by herself - there's a tire structure that she hasn't tried yet, and she can't go down the vertical poles by herself. Sometime's she'll try to do it herself, but only if she's following big kids around and they go down the poles. We need to work on her pole-descending technique so that I don't have to worry quite as much when she gets near the poles.

Although this playground is a community playground, rather then being directly tied to a school, I believe that it is used by the elementary school nearest to it. So, although we've visited the playground on the weekends or during the summer, this week was the first time that we went on a weekday after school got out for the day. Getting there at about 3:30 worked perfectly - all of the school traffic was gone and it gave us enough time to play for an hour or so before coming home to make supper.

*Piper-girl was an incredibly early walker, so we've been following her around on this playground since before she was a year old.