Valerie has a grand scheme of fixing up the backyard this spring to make things more play-friendly for the kids. Her theory is that if the kids have lots of fun things to do in the yard, they are more likely to let her peacefully sit out on the deck, sipping lemonade from a coconut and slowly gestate a baby.
After all, everyone knows that a worn-out child equals happy parents at the end of the day. Part of our plans (for the time being at least) involve construction of a play set. Unsatisfied with the cost and design of what we have found so far available locally, I will be designing and building something myself which will be fine as long as everything I learned about architecture from Dr. Seuss proves true in reality.
Seeing Benjamin play and enjoy himself on the beach and in the sand recently, we decided to also purchase him a little sand play table that would keep him busy. On Saturday, we decided to head to Toys R Us to see what was available. We quickly found what we were looking for, a tidy little sand and water table that folded up neatly and rolled away for easy storage. The picture of the happy little well-groomed yuppie children on the box sealed the deal.
We checked out adding a 50lb bag of sand and headed home to set it up which was no problem at all.
One thing that we had expected was true. Ben loved playing in the sand. Looking back however, the combination of a sand AND water table is only a good idea in theory. The happy little children on the box were content to keep water on the water side and sand on the sand side but any three-dimensional child of course instantly begins mixing the two. Suffice to say, after some re-consideration, we have converted this to a sand-only table, getting rid of the water and filling that side with sand as well.
Of course the next best thing to mixing the sand and water was to take the sand outside the box which now means that the 50lbs of sand in the table has now become about 10lbs of sand in the table with the remaining 40lbs under the deck, in the flower boxes, in any stray shoes that might have been in the area, in the dog’s fur etc. etc.
All I can say is that it is a good thing that Valerie’s lemonade coconut has a secure lid.
3 comments:
What a fun outdoor toy! We, too, have purchased what seemed to be a very clean with a lid sand box. It is worse than if Joe were to have put 4 pieces of wood together and placed it directly on the ground. About a week after putting the sand in our little box all of it was on the ground suffocating our grass!!! Why do the funnest things have to be so messy.
hey, I'm pretty sure at playgroup Valerie was warned about the sandbox/water table combo!! HAHA
Andrew wants to come and play!!!
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