Playground

Yesterday I took Penny to the playground at Optimist Park in the Indianhead neighborhood. There was a meetup group there and we met three other moms and their kids - one 2 year old and two 3 year olds. All the other children noticed Penny, but Penny was much more interested in the playground itself. She loved the slides and the steps going up and down onto the play gym. I didn't want her to do those things by herself yet so I got quite the workout going up and down with her and I didn't really get to talk to the other moms much. But, I still think we'll go back again because she did seem to have a really good time. She lit up like it was Christmas every time we went down the slide. We ended up staying just a little over an hour because she got obsessed with a game of volleyball being played by some grownups. She saw their volleyball and really, really, really wanted to play with it. She kept trying to run out onto the (sand) court and get in the middle of their game. Nothing I did could convince her that she didn't want to be on that volleyball court so I just decided to call it a day. One of the other moms said that her 3 year old went through a phase to where if she drove by the playground and there were people on the volleyball court, she wouldn't stop and would keep going to another park because he would only be interested in joining the game. I have to admit though there was something very comical about this little 13 month old running out onto the volleyball court in the middle of a bunch of grown Asian men waving her arms and pointing to the volleyball like they were supposed to let her play.