Water play

Devon has now completely figured out how to remove her diaper, much to everyone's dismay. On Friday when I picked her up at Elaine's, Elaine told me that she had taken it off during naptime (unbeknownst to Elaine) and then proceeded to poop in the crib. Delightful. We've got the same activity here -- one minute she has a diaper on, the next it's off. She's on her way to becoming a little naturist. We're trying to keep her in clothes, as opposed to running around in a diaper, because at least then it's a lot harder for her to remove the diaper. But of course she doesn't like wearing clothes, so it's a big battle every morning to get her to struggle into something.

Yesterday we had a full day of fun, starting with the playground in the Presidio. The very southern part of the Presidio abuts an extremely fancy neighborhood, and there's a children's playground right at the border between the Presidio and this neighborhood, Laurel Heights. This playground isn't too far away from 8th Ave, so we can easily become regular interlopers. This is one of those very modern playgrounds that are becoming quite common in San Francisco -- lots of swingsets, jungle gyms and soft, padded surfaces everywhere. This is an especially nice playground because it's very large, abuts a huge lawn with a baseball diamond and in particular has a fountain that kids can play in. The fountain is oblong with a little trough in the middle of rocks; inset in the walls are abalone shells. To the side of the fountain is a little button; you push the button, and for about 5 seconds water flows out of all the abalone shells. It all empties into a big sand play area. Yesterday it was extremely hot for San Francisco, probably low 80s. Devon, along with a lot of kids in the playground, was loving this fountain. I (or another parent) would push the button so water would come out, and she'd run her hands under it exclaiming, "Wawa, wawa!" and then stomp around. She also (of course) kept drinking from it -- I can only hope the water was at least halfway clean. The fountain created a very satisfying mud puddle in the sand area, which she proceeded to stomp around in for at least 15 minutes. It was very traumatizing when we finally had to leave to go have lunch, and she was so tired that she crashed in the car on the way home.

After that she woke up from her nap and played around the house for a while. At one point she saw her bathing suit in the entry way and grabbed it. Holding it aloft, she kept crying, "Poo, poo." At first I thought that she was actually trying to tell me that she needed her diaper changed, but after a quick check, I clearly saw that wasn't the case. After a couple more minutes, I finally realized that she was saying "pool" and wanted to go swimming. She went swimming quite a lot in Florida and I think was associating the bathing suit very closely with the pool. So we packed up and drove over to the JCC (our gym, the Jewish Community Center) for a swim. The JCC's pool is indoors, which is generally a very good thing here although today was one of the few days when it was definitely warm enough to swim outside, and it's usually packed with kids. It also has a full compliment of toys, which Devon loves -- plastic balls, little animals that sink so kids can dive for them on the bottom of the pool, rings, kickboards, etc. I pulled her up and down the length of the pool, primarily searching for balls. Whenever we captured one or two, inevitably another ball was far more enticing and we had to get that. She also had a great time going up and down the stairs into the pool: up the stairs, walk around on the deck and check out other people's belongings (towels, keys, goggles), come back down the stairs into the pool; repeat. We finally ended the day after she sprinted a little too fast down the deck, slipped and cracked her head. The hall into the ladies' locker room is lined with something that's akin to Astroturf, but there's one spot that's not covered and it's quite slick. Devon hit that at full speed walk and in an instant her feet had slipped out beneath her. She recovered after a few minutes of wailing, but she's already got a goose egg on the back of her head.