Aspen Greenbelt Park

Last Tuesday we went to a new park along the greenbelt in West Davis (Aspen).  It was quite warm outside and as it got later in the day, the mosquitoes were coming out in force.  They were huge.  While Eddie ran around playing on the infrastructure, I got to talk to an older woman who was there nannying for her granddaughter.  This woman is retired but drives between Davis (3 days a week) and Mountain View (2 days a week) from Marin to care for her grandkids.  Whoa, she's one dedicated mother/grandmother.  We got to talk about everything from career choices to Lyme disease to horses.

Who needs a playground when there are storm drains to play on?  This kid is definitely a Bower.

And who needs a slide when there's a cinderblock wall to walk on?

For what it's worth (not much to Eddie), here's the park.  Eddie was wearing a stegosaurus shirt AND sweatshirt that day...how fun that there was also a stegosaurus structure, too?

When the nice grandmother left the park, Eddie and I played on the dino together.  I was only able to get one measely picture of him before he ran off to play on the cinderblock wall again.  

Eventually it was too buggy to play anymore so I went over to get him.  Turns out he'd run off because he had to poop...and he had a giant blow out.  Newborn blowouts are one thing, but a toddler blow out is a much BIGGER thing.  So I had to change my squirmy child in the back of the van, atop a sack of chicken feed, in the midst of a swarm of mosquitoes.  Boy, was that fun.  Once we were seated in the car with the doors closed, I spent a good 10 minutes killing TONS of mosquitoes while the van idled.  It was insane.

After he was all cleaned up and in a new set of clothes, we made a quick stop to the pet store to buy an aquatic snail.  My hope was to have this shelled guy keep the tank clean of all the algae that grows on the filter.  Of course, I could just keep the tank light off to prevent so much photosynthesis.  Within a few hours the snail had found the algaed filter...good boy!

Yesterday was pretty cold, so I wasn't too interested in playing at the park.  I convinced Eddie into going to the library.  He LOVES returning the books using the automated scanner thing outside.  In fact, he likes to help everyone else return their books.  Most of them think it's cute but some of the teenagers don't have the patience for it.  Inside the library, he's mostly interested in (pretending to use) the computers and playing with the mini kitchen toy.  I always pick out a few books for us to borrow.  This time we ended up with 5 books and he actually seems interested in reading all of them with me.  There are stools in front of each automated checkout counter and Eddie has learned how to scan our card and each book.  Teehee, it's adorable.  

"Mama, I do it. See?  Card, book, book."

We were both starving after an hour in the library so we decided to head to a park to eat our snack.  It was still freezing outside and the wind had picked up so we didn't stay long.  This time we went to Covell City Park.  We didn't play on the structures much, because of the cold.  But also because I think Eddie's a little too young to "get" it.  It's a modern structure with ropes and spinning seat things that look too much like Diva Cups to me.