Playground Photo Binge

I took Hunter to the park this past weekend.  He wriggled out of the stroller the instead I popped the safety belt, and squirmed onto the ground where he froze for a moment like a bird dog on point.  You can see the ideas of what trouble can I get into first! running through his brain. 

First he decided to investigate all the climb-y things so plentifully scattered about.

 

 

After watching kids pop out of the bottom of the spiraly slide he crawled over, stuck his head up into it and hollered “Dadababa whowho wow?”  (Translation:  "Where do those kids come from???")

 

Then he sat and watched five kindergarteners pelt across the playground.

“They are so silly looking, Mom, wasting all that energy on nothing!”  (You should see yourself, dear.)

He sat in the sunshine and thought Baby Ninja thoughts.

 

After a while he got worn out and sat in peaceful enjoyment of the ebb and flow of playground chaos. He is so darn beautiful, isn’t he?

 

His chubby babyhands make my heart stop.

 

On the way home I saw this leaf and crouched down in the middle of the running path, one foot jammed behind the stroller wheel while I twisted into a human pretzel to capture the liquid color of it.

 

This, so far as I can tell, is the very first sunset I have clicked shutter on since moving back to Wisconsin.  In Florida, sunsets are an institution, and beach sunsets became my peaceful place.  In that glorious moment where the sky exploded into color, my heart would find content.  I thought it seemed fitting that this day at the playground, like a little bubble of stability in the whirlpool of our everyday life, ended with a sunset over a river which rivaled those over the ocean.