Play

This week’s You Capture theme was “play” and I had a hard time deciding what to shoot.  I’ve said before, my cellphone has trouble capturing quick movements, and now that Nora knows how to crawl, she is a super speedy girl.  She’s now mobile enough to be dangerous: moving Pip’s food from his food dish to his water bowl, getting into the recycling bin, and trying to climb into the bathtub when I’m not looking.  So unless the light is really good and my trigger finger is fast (lucky), most play in action shots don’t turn out too well.  And lately, she’s not much into toys – just stuff we don’t want her to have.  But then yesterday when I saw how well the pictures turned out from our trip to the park with Mr. V, I knew I had to share them.

You see, every afternoon when Mr. V comes over, we set out on an adventure.  I get out a carrier for Nora (so I can go hands free following Mr. V around)

fill up two water bottles, load him in the jogger, and off we go.  Sometimes we go down to the playground at Children’s Beach, but lately we’ve been heading over to Mill Hill Park so Pip can run around too.

Mr. V just cracks me up, so much!  The first thing he does when we get to the park is climb out of the “trailer,” sit down and take his shoes off.  And when we get to the valley in the middle, he says, “climb the dirt” and runs up to a hill that’s been washed bare by summer thunderstorms.

He climbs to the top, carrying his water bottle the entire time, checks out the “baby tree”

And goes right back to the hill and dirt, climbing up and down, and then stopping to sit for a moment or two before doing it all again.  He gets covered in dust and dirt, but it’s the end of the day and he’s having fun, so I don’t say anything.

I love how amazingly simple it is – bare feet, dirt, grass, and a park without fancy toys or even a playground.  And he’s so happy.

When I think about how play is supposed to be, this is it: just a little boy chasing a dog through the woods and meadows (and a grown up just following behind, saying little, letting him take the lead).  And then when he’s all tired out, he comes up to me and grabs my hand and says “home.”

So we walk back to the stroller, hand-in-hand, and I can’t help myself from looking ahead to when Nora will be this age running through the park.  I hope she will like dirt and baby trees.