Wet Fall Fun

September has not been very sunny. The vast majority of the time it has just finished raining, it's raining, or it's about to rain--in other words it's WET. There are puddles everywhere. This doesn't prevent the children from going outside (they love their umbrellas and rainboots), but it makes it hard to trek in the woods or go down slides.

The children have found some great wet activities. Yesterday Jake opened his last unopened Christmas gift. It was a remote control amphibian vehicle, the gator. It was designed to float on water. We don't have deep enough puddles for the vehicle to float, but we do have a puddle on the driveway that it can drive through. Bentley spent an hour yesterday driving the gator around. When he took it outside today I asked him why Jake hadn't tried it out yet. He told me that Jake was concerned that he wouldn't like playing with it. You can see why Jake never gets around to opening his toys, can't you? (Kara will tell you that I have this same problem. I have a hard time using new purchases. It's not a good habit to have.)

After both boys played with the gator, Bentley decided to "write" on the porch. This is a new activity that he discovered last week. He got the badmitton birdie bottom wet and then wrote words on the porch deck. How....fun? I suggested he use something other than the badmitton birdie as I didn't want it damaged. His mom gave him a foam brush. Today when he started painting the porch, Jake asked for his own brush. I gave him one and he delightedly "painted" the porch boards for quite some time.

After a while Bentley decided that fun as it was to paint the porch with water, perhaps it would be even more exciting to draw with chalk on the driveway. Guess what he drew? (If you read this blog, you ought to have a pretty good guess.) A large, blue dragon.

Viva finally joined the boys in their painting activities. Viva, of course, went for the messier acitivity, drawing with chalk. You can count on her to do that. Bentley came in one time to complain that she was eating the chalk. She denied the charge. Who knows what was going on.

The children are now allowed to play outside on their own as long as more than one of them is outside. They've been doing this for a week or so. We discussed bears and moose and stray dogs and set them free. It's a new chapter in their lives and in our lives.

What kind of crises do the children have when on their own? Jake came in because he scraped his finger on the pavement when drawing with chalk and needed a band-aid. Bentley came in to complain that Jake got him wet. Jake came in because he wanted his shoe cleaned when he stomped on a spider that had the audacity to walk on his water painting. Bentley came in to complain that Viva was eating chalk. Jake came in when he fell and got his forearms dirty. Bentley came in to tell us that Viva broke the gator.

Do you notice the pattern here? Bentley comes in to inform of us his siblings' inappropriate behavior. Jake comes in to get his owies made better. Viva does not come in at all.