outside « Maddox Heller

Posts Tagged ‘outside’

Hiking Plum Island

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Something weird is happening. Maddox is making us into “outdoor people.” Today we drove out to Plum Island to walk along the Hellcat trail, which went through a series of dune and then marsh. If you had told us, oh, four years ago that we would have voluntarily done this, I would have called you crazy. In fact, there are pictures of me (and my sisters) sulkenly lying on the plankboard trail about ten years ago, when my family went here for a vacation.

Today though, we had a great time. It’s amazing to find such a vast amount of open space in the area.

Maddox loves trails, and always has — he is still endlessly entertained by the simple act of moving forward. A trail just seems to drive him on.

Plus, there were stairs on this trail. Can you imagine being of the age where stairs fill you with happiness and wonder?

I’m also still amazed at his energy. The trail wasn’t strenous at all, but he was halfway running the whole time. He did stop at one point, plop himself down, and request water and raisins.

He made it nearly two miles before he requested a piggyback!

Tags: outings, outside, walking, walks
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Fall Afternoon in Moseley Woods

Monday, October 24th, 2011

This weekend we took a short trip over to Moseley Woods, a small forest park in Newburyport along the Merrimack River. It has some nice trails of reasonable length for a toddler, a playground, and some swings. It’s also a bit more chill than some of the other neighborhood playgrounds.

Maddox is still completely obsessed with the great outdoors though, and so we’re trying to squeeze as much of them in as possible before entering the frigid winter months here in New England.

Tags: laughter, outside, video
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Fall Weekend

Monday, October 17th, 2011

We had a wonderful fall weather this weekend in New England, so we decided to do something seasonally appropriate and go buy a pumpkin.

We went to Russel Orchards in Ipswitch, which besides having pumpkins also had chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and horses for Maddox to look at. He severely disciplined the chickens for being “too noisy”, and was too apprehensive to pet the friendly pony, but he loved climbing over the pumpkins and finding one that he could carry.

After picking out a few pumpkins, we continued east towards Crane Estate on Castle Hill, a beautiful estate that we were last at about a week before Maddox was born.

I would rank “running around in a big field” one of Maddox’s top activities of all time, so a place like this was perfect for him, and nice for us to enjoy the scenery.

After all the outdoor activity, we needed to scrub off all that dust, so Mads had a quick bath and then hung out in what I refer to as his Yoda robe for awhile.

The next morning, Mom had to go meet some people for work, so Mads and I headed to the toy story with the original intention of buying a kite. Which we did, but not without a 45 minute detour to play with the train set.

We finally made our way to the northern tip of Plum Island, trekked out to the beach there, and gave our new $6 kite a test flight.

Mads was thrilled with the kite (“Flying! Flying!”), even though I couldn’t keep the thing up in the air for more than 10 or 20 seconds due to the massive gusts of wind on the beach.

We spent some more time just hanging out, playing with the sand, throwing the sand into the ocean, and, of course, picking up sticks. I left with what I thought was just enough time to get back before nap time, but unfortunately didn’t quite make it.

Tags: beach, outside, video
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Maudslay Family Day

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

Every year, Newburyport has something called Yankee Homecoming, a week of summer activites, many of which are great for kids. One of those is Family Day at nearby Maudslay State Park.

Last year we went, in what was a good example of a phase we went through where we went to anything remotely kid oriented even if it really wasn’t geared towards one year-olds. Well, Maddox was two this year, so I figured there had to be something he would find interesting.

After we walked through the whole fair, past 45 booths or so, can you guess what he found most interesting? That’s right, a rock. To give him credit, it was a pretty interesting rock as far as rocks go.

Luckily, on the way back they had started another activity: Gymanstics demonstrations. Maddox found this fascinating. Whenever someone would finish their routine, he would yell “More jump!”. After a few minutes he actually sat down and would clap whenever someone finished.

After watching demonstrations, the gymnasts came out and let the kids run around on the pads. One of the girls came up to Maddox, and he gladly held her hand as she led him around on the equipment.

He even surprised me when he asked for my hand as he approached the balance beam. I have no idea when he learned to walk a balance beam, but after holding my hand he slowly walked across it, putting one foot in front of the other.

Tags: outings, outside
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Finally Spring

Saturday, April 16th, 2011

It’s only been warm enough to go outside for two, maybe three weekends so far, but I’m already wondering how we got through a whole winter cooped up inside. Mads is at the age where he can be endless entertained by just plopping him down on a lawn.

On Friday, I took him to Endicott Park in Danvers, which has a nice playground area for 2-5 year olds. Mads couldn’t have been less interested in the playground itself though. Instead, he had a blast just running around, collecting sticks and dirt. He does seem to be very sociable, chasing after kids or yelling their names when he hears their parents or friends do it.

Today, Leanne was in Boston yet again for a hair cut, and even though it was a somewhat chilly 45 and very windy, we decided to brave the outdoors. We went to a wonderful park called Moseley Woods, just a few minutes from our house, that I only just noticed last week. It is more of a “woods” than a park, which is the perfect place for Mads as there’s a million leaves and sticks to collect and organize. It’s also right along the Merrimac River which makes for a scenic view for dad.

I thought Mads would want to explore the actual playground, but instead he seemed more inclined to just walk around, so we did our first trail! I actually logged the whole thing and posted it at RunKeeper. Maddox isn’t going to set any speed records at a pace of 93 minutes per mile, but he had a nice time exploring the woods, saying hi to the occasional puppy that passed.

Personally, I seem to have finally gotten an appreciation for nice hikes in the woods, something I absolutely loathed growing up. I’m sure Maddox will eventually rebel against them in the same way – it’s only fair to my mom and dad, right?

Tags: outings, outside, video, walking
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