Saturday, in the Park

My wife and I took Mighty Boy, our 2-1/2 year old son, to play in the Commonwealth of Greenlake wading pool, as the weather is hot and perfect on this, the last day of Wading Pool Season. We all enjoyed splashing around with each other and there were at least 30 children, maybe 50, in the pool at any one time. After 1:30 Mighty Boy pretended he was a dog, so we played "fetch" with him for a half hour, tossing a new fabric waterball which bounces across the surface and floats; he would go up, grab the fabric in his teeth, and come back on all fours to look up at me, panting a pretty darned good imitation of a dog, whereupon I'd pat him on the head and say, "Good dog, good dog, now drop the ball." I'm not sure what the other parents made of our behavior, but Mighty Boy found it to be great fun and later re-donned his humanity by tearing into a post-pool rainbow creamsicle and most of his mom's ice cream sandwich. Just like the song by Chicago says, there was a man selling ice cream.

On coming back home, I searched on Google Images for the wading pool, and to my surprise there are already quite a few online. The picture above is from 1934, and it gives me an idea for future activities with Beren. Sailing ships! That would be fun. Something tells me, however, that Mighty Boy will present a danger to any model sailboat for some time to come. So I'll look for a very sturdy version.

Update: I looked up the lyrics to "Saturday in the Park," and there's a section in the song that I never understood before:

Slow motion riders
fly the colours of the day.
A bronze man still can
tell stories his own way.
Listen children, all is not lost
all is not lost!