Daddy Date: Bouncy Park

The Prince is a wonderful guy. We each take him out on a "date" once a week, and as soon as the date is done, he can't wait to talk about when our next one will be. He talks about the date coming up every day and asks how long it will be. Usually we let him choose the activity, but this week I decided I wanted to take him to a store with some blow up slides in our mall. He seemed interested in the idea of a "bouncy park," though it took a portion of my cunning to get him past the toy cars right out front (ride in them for a dollar).

He had a blast, as you can see. I have decided I am very pleased with the video capabilities of my new camera. I am disappointed in how blurry so many of the pictures turn out. So I may do a lot more videos or see if taking smaller (or larger) pictures helps it any. However, I do like the "magic - pop art" setting used in the right hand picture. Other times it looks funky, but that brightness is about right.

Prince is an amazing climber.

 We spent some time with him jumping off this slide into my arms, letting me spin him around a little before he was off to do it again.

I played a little with him too. When we got there we were the only kids there, so I felt pretty free to know I wasn't exceeding their weight limit. Prince had a lot of fun with me crawl-chasing him around the farm. My hat found its way onto the dog at one point.








I tried to get him to climb on the horse. When he did, wouldn't you know, down it went! He's a very good sport about a great many things.

It took a while for me to convince him to go down the Big Slide. When he did, it was totally worth it.

Eventually some other kids showed up too and Prince was a soft boy around them. I learned that I was a) the only parent playing with the child too; b) almost the only parent who spent much time looking at what his kid was up to; c) the only parent who was concerned about what the other children were doing.

This was something I really want to take him to before we left Ithaca. I'm glad I did.

 -- Derrill