Playing in the Play Area

Now that Noah is upright at least as much as he's crawling, maybe a little more even, we're already getting to do things that just didn't work too well before. One has to do with our backyard. Although Noah is getting scary about how quickly he moves to openings on our back deck, as long as I'm very alert I can pretty much head off any death defying leaps down the slide or steps. For those of you who don't know, we have a slide off of our back deck into what we call the Play Area (once again if you've read the blog for long, you know that we have very literal names for everything - see "Big Truck"). So if I can move fast enough, I can get down the steps to the slide before Noah "walks" himself down and I can help him sit & slide, which he likes very much. Then once we're down, it has become a very fun place to be. Because we decided to make the ground play stones in that area, I've been hesitant to have Noah there much because rocks were going in his mouth like Cheerios for a while. But now he's more interested in sliding, swinging and just walking around. So it's become a fun place for him and Bennett to be, much like we hoped when we made it. The big problem came yesterday when we were playing and Bennett took the lid off the sandbox. Not so into eating rocks anymore, but sand is a whole other story for Noah. If you looked at the birthday pictures from the other day, you may see a familiar looking picture to today's, except todays isn't icing all over his face...it's sand. Gotta love it. So we're not all the way there yet but we're happy that the playhouse, slides & other little kid toys have been revived as great things to do in the afternoon at our house. It's really fun to have the boys playing together - I hope it's a sign of times to come when they will spend increasingly longer times entertaining each other!!

Taking a bite of sand...

Thinking about it...

And deciding to get some more. I always say, there's nothing Noah won't eat!!

Up the slide...And down the stairs. Why is that something they know to do at birth? Why not up the stairs and down the slide? It works so much better!!Bennett's a little big for this one, but it's still fun for him! Noah trying to decide about the big slide...
And after he went down!
Not only is he walking but he's already trying to kick a ball too!
Sweet Bennett! (the blue on the eye is not a bruise - it's marker from school, took 2 days to get off!)