Spring is Here!

Spring has finally sprung and to celebrate we took a trip to the park. Last week we went to a park that we visit often, but it was the first time this spring. Justin loved it, but I had visions of what the summer will be like. Justin wants to crawl, but most of the parks aren't designed for crawlers with lint-picking (or any kind of picking and putting in one's mouth) tendencies. The park is covered with wood chips. But the play area is a series of bridges and slides so Justin took his first gander at a solo trip down the slide. I was right there and I caught him at the bottom, and he loved it! Most of the time was spend working on teaching him that he couldn't just dive at the slide, you need to sit on your bottom and scoot off the top to slide. But he definitely wanted more! It was really difficult for me to keep track of him because the railings were really high so he could crawl off at any time. I was slightly neglectful of Travis because I was watching Justin so closely. Travis did take his first solo down the firepole though! That was a big step for him. He wanted Justin to go down too, since we are the DeCarlo firefighters, after all.

I missed pictures of that venture, so I made sure to bring the camera to catch some of this trip. This park was perfect for Justin! It had some of the rubber matting underneath the play area so it was soft for crawling, but not comprised of a million little pieces begging to be eaten! There were 2 areas too, one for littler kids and another for bigger kids plus swings (including the baby "bucket" swings!). And they were close so I could watch both kids at the same time. Justin could crawl all the way up to the top and slide down, mostly by himself! We got some great pictures, some even without the cheese face!

Here's ready to go at the top. This time he did so much better setting up to go down the slide. He crawled up and turned around and sat up at the top. And then he leaned forward to give himself the momentum to slide!

And he did it all by himself! He cackled with glee!

The last time down the slide he decided to go down the left side instead of the right and I couldn't get there quite fast enough so he did a face plant down the slide. It's major allergy season here with the pine trees blooming so everything is covered with yellow powder. He has already cleaned off the right side with his bottom, but the left was still yellow, so he was yellow too by the time he made it to the bottom.

Even his forehead...