Splashback

Playgrounds aren't much good when they're wet, but last weekend we ended up in a wet playground anyway. We had gone to a local park for some fresh air and because B wanted to locate a hard-to-find geocache near the baseball diamond. I decided that faced with the option of Mabel running around on wet metal bleachers above asphalt or playing on a wet playground with nice soft mulch under her, I'd go with the latter. She ended up with sopping wet trouser-bottoms and front-of-coat, but that was better than concussion. We were headed straight home anyway.

She stopped where the water had collected at the bottom of a slide and started to scoop wood chips off the ground and drop them in. It gave me a total flashback to her brother at the same age, who would happily spend twenty minutes - or as long as I could stand it - in just-above-freezing weather at our local slides plopping wood chunks (I think they bought the cheap stuff; heavy on the wood, not so much with the chip) into the puddle on the slide and then sloshing the water around with a stick. His sleeve and most of his front would be soaked with icy water, but he didn't care.

I happened upon a little video of him at 2 or so, singing Insy Winsy Spider and accompanying himself on his cooling-rack guitar (okay, I'm probably the only person who could have told you what the song was, and in hindsight I only knew because of the title of the clip). But where did that funny, happy, chubby, irrational toddler go? How can he be almost five - a proper kid with pointy elbows and knees and a whole complex life of his own just starting to open up and take him where I can't follow?

Mabel monologued as follows the other day: "Next year I'll be three and I'll go to school and you'll ask me what I did at school and I'll say I don't remember." (She knows, because that's what her big brother does.) One of these days Mabel won't be my funny happy sweet toddler either. I'll be sad when I look at the photos - but just imagine the amazing, complicated, challenging girl she's going to turn into.

It's a bit of a scary thought, actually, so I think I'll just stay here with the manic teething toddler for now, if you don't mind.