Giddy up!

Yesterday it was a beautiful and balmy 70 degrees in our 'hood.  I couldn't wait to take Nick outside to play, and had grand plans to wheel him around the neighborhood in his wagon.  But the idea was quickly shot down when I realized 1) It's sort of a complicated process for me to haul the wagon outside, then load it with snacks/drinks/toys/etc, then grab Nick, all while fending off Whinnie and trying to explain to her that she can't come with us, 2) Todd wasn't home to help with this complicated process, and 3) the wagon is currently sitting in the living room FILLED with the 9,000+ stuffed animals people have given Nick (mostly for his birthday...hello, he has 3 pillow pets already...and those suckers are not small), so we decided to go for a much easier option. 

I pulled his "First Years" push car outside (the one my grandparents bought him for Christmas, that took my sweet hubby 3 hours of his Christmas day to assemble), plopped him in, and started pushing him with the long handle.  But homeboy is all about doing things himself these days, not to mention his little legs are getting too long to be pushed without having them drag and scrape on the sidewalk, so all Nick wanted to do was walk and push the car himself.  I obliged and we walked up and down the sidewalk in front of our house for about 15 minutes. 

When we both got tired of that activity, I thought it would be fun to find the swings in the next neighborhood over.  So we set off on a little walk around the neighborhood, but I couldn't find the cut through in the woods that one of our neighbors told us about, so we never found the playground with the swings.  Instead we opted to visit our little playground, which is practically in our backyard.  No swings, but three slides, two little rocking animals, and a ton of things to climb on.  I put Nick on one of the little horses and he was a mixture of excited and not sure what to think:

After riding the horse for a few minutes, I thought it would be fun to take him down the slide on my lap.  I put my phone down with my keys, so naturally I forgot to take any pictures of the sliding.  Nick belly laughed every time we went down the slide.  Seeing as the slide was maybe 5 feet tall (at most) I thought it would be fun for me to set him on the slide on his own, and guide him down (with my hands around his waist).  He LOVED this.  He started giggling and cracking up.  In fact, he laughed so hard that he got the hiccups, hiccup-burped and vomited on the slide.  Awesome.  It was just a teeny bit of vomit (more like a throw-up burp), so we yanked off that cute fleece vest he was wearing, and wiped it up.  And then we continued to slide.

Finally it was dinner time, and we were both sweaty and exhausted, so we happily trekked home.  And Nick was passed out by 6:30pm AND slept like a log.  Looks like we will definitely be spending many a day/afternoon/evening at the playground this spring and summer...and possibly going on a hunt for a little slide for our own backyard!  Thank goodness for warm winter days!