Maddox had quite a fun weekend, thanks to a visit from his (nearly) five year old cousin, Aoife, and Leanne’s sister Kristy. They can only make sporadic visits, but this was the first time she could really interact with Maddox as something besides a blog, so I’m sure that was a nice change for her.
It’s very interesting to see how Mads interacts with other children. He seems much more curious about them in general than adults, which I suppose makes sense. Of course he interacts every day with two 2 year old twins at daycare, but we never get to see that. He still kind of does his own thing, but if another child starts playing with something interesting he’ll run over and check it out.
One of the funniest moments of the weekend was when Maddox became absolutely enthralled by these huge tubs of ice filled with soda at a get-together we had on Saturday. He spent literally thirty minutes moving pieces of ice, one by one, from one bucket to another. Then he spent the next thirty minutes stirring them with a stick. By the end of it, three other children were all stirring the ice with sticks. Who knew a one year old could be such a little leader.
Earlier in the day we also discovered the wonderful Cashman Park, which is right on the water in Newburyport. It has three sections for each age group, has lots of shade for when it’s sunny, and is surrounded by huge fields. It’s also really nice to have Maddox be skilled enough at moving around that we can plop him down and off he goes. We still have to be very careful around steps though as about 15% of the time he isn’t aware of them, and another 15% of the time he figures he’ll just try walking right down them and see what happens.
It certainly is a learning experience though, as a parent, figuring out the dynamics of interacting with other parents and their children on the playground. Again, Mads mostly found his own thing to do (he’s really into moving woodchips around), but he did have one cute moment where another girl his age came up and hugged him. I don’t think he noticed though, he seemed very focused on the woodchips at the moment.
