Playground!

This morning, the boys and I met some MOPS friends at a local playground. This particular playground is in the middle of a shopping center parking lot! Half of the playground has regular play equipment, and the other half has a splash pad on it. Drake is one of those kids who is slow to "warm up" to some things, and water parks are one of those things. He never did warm up to the idea of playing at the splash pad today, so we stayed on the "dry" side of the playground. It was so hot, though...even I wanted to make a couple of dashes through the water! (Notice that the boys were strippin' by the end! Believe me - I would have, too, if I could. Those darn indecent exposure laws!)

Drake the climber

Levi wants to be a big boy, too!

Crawling over to the slide

Now, if he could only figure out how to get up there!

On the climbing wall...

...and climbing up!

A hot and sweaty baby! Eventually Levi was stripped down to his diaper and crawling around. I actually had a lady I didn't know come and ask me about cloth diapering! So that was kinda cool. :)

One last climb up for Big Bro before it was time to go home for lunch - and a nap for the cranky, smaller one! ;)

So all in all it was a pretty fun morning. We're having our MOPS family picnic for the summer this coming Saturday, so I'll be seeing these ladies/kiddos again soon, plus the daddies. There is this one particular mom who has a baby 2 weeks younger than Levi, and she has always seemed to relish in "kid competition" with me. And of course, with Levi still not walking at almost 17 months, there's no contest here! I feel bad because I cringed when I saw her today. It didn't take much small talk before she commented, "Wow, he's STILL not walking? He's sure taking his time, isn't he?" So what am I supposed to say to that? I agreed that he was indeed taking his time, and assured her that he was just on his own little time table - all children are different - and that I wasn't too concerned about his development. Her son is like Drake when he was a baby, and was one of those early walkers, like before his first birthday, so he's of course running circles around us.

Sigh. Seeing the two of them next to each other put this little seed of doubt in my mind. Is Levi really okay, like I've truly believed until this point? But 18 months seems to be the cutoff before the doctors start getting alarmed and writing referrals to who-knows-where. Come on, Levi. A month to go...let's get to walkin' already! ;) But seriously, I must remind myself that even when I'm unsure, God has it all under control. A beloved pastor we had at our last assignment used to encourage us to wonder, "What is God up to?" And when you look at it from that perspective, any problem or trial can look like an adventure instead of a concern.