Kids Will Be Kids

Today we all tried to recuperate from yesterday’s drive from Montauk. The kids let me sleep until after 8:00! I’m sure it was torture for them knowing that I was sleeping in their house but they weren’t allowed to wake me up.

After breakfast the kids went outside to show me their play set. Lauren is an expert on the climbing wall- you have to see the video I took to believe it. I was tricked by the kids into breaking one of the major rules: no opening the sand box until the afternoon. Alex and Claire plan it so the kids stay clean and dry in the morning, and, after their naps, they get dirty, take baths, then go to bed. Well, the parents weren’t around and Lauren asked me to pull the cover off of the sandbox. Within minutes both kids were wet and dirty (I got nice pictures of all of it). So much for their plan!

Anyway, most of our morning was spent trying to get the kids balls unstuck from a tree. Of course, Alex and I were acting childish while Claire was inside. We were showing Jacob and Lauren how high we can throw their playground balls, which turned into a contest to see who can throw it the highest. One ball got stuck in the tree. So we used the other ball to try to knock it down. Before we knew it, we had two balls stuck.

This is where it got interesting. We tried using a third playground ball to knock the other balls loose. First, we threw it up in the tree. Didn’t work and our arms were feeling like lead. Then, I thought we could get more power behind it by kicking it. More power but less control. Didn’t work. Claire now came out to watch what we were doing. She was probably mostly concerned that we didn’t hurt Jacob or Lauren, but she also likes watching us making fools of ourselves. Next, Alex got a wiffle ball bat and we started hitting the ball in the tree. That got a lot of power. We had the most success when Alex pitched it to me but all we succeeded in doing was knocking a lot of branches and leaves out of the tree.


The last idea was nerf-type football. I actually hit one of the balls a few times throwing the football and it was looking good. Unfortunately, one of my throws went right through the tree and ended up stuck in a different tree. It was lunchtime, the kids were dirty, our arms were tired, and Claire signaled an end to our game. We checked again this afternoon and all three balls are still stuck (we were kinda hoping the wind might blow them down).

We’re off the Toledo Zoo tomorrow morning, but after that we might come up with some new ideas for getting the balls down!