Family Night

Wednesday nights are family night at the Shifrin house.  It's not as progressive as it sounds.  Sometimes it involves Simon and I lying inert on the living room floor while Clara treats our exhausted bodies like a military training course.

Tonight was a true family night, though.  The sun was out, the trees were green, and it seemed like all the flowers in the neighborhood were in bloom.  We decided to walk to the park.

The park was filled with kids.  There was a softball game going on in one corner, and a pick-up basketball game on the concrete court.  After we took her out of her stroller, Clara's sat in the grass for a minute because she didn't know what to do first.  Some little boys were playing Frisbee with their parents.

"Ball! Ball!" Clara yelled, taking off for them.

"Hey, Clara, don't you want to play on the equipment?" I asked.  She did.  But what about that kid going by on a skateboard?  How did he balance without falling?  And what about that little girl going past on her pink, sparkly bike, with her dad helping her stay up?  And look, there was a dog over there.  And a lady with a baby over there.

We went down one of the straight slides a few times.  It had a bump in the middle.  Clara went down it so fast, she caught air on the bump.

"Hi! Hi!" Clara said to a little girl with silky brown hair while climbing up the stairs to go down the slide again.  "Hi," the little girl said, and turned to her friend, "That baby said 'hi' to me."

We went down a corkscrew slide and played chase on a jungle gym.  The jungle gym had a captain's wheel.  A little boy named Henry was monopolizing it.  He wore socks with sailboats on them and Crocs like Clara's.  He told her she couldn't play on the wheel.

"Hen," his dad said with a warning in his voice.  Henry started to move and Clara jostled him aside, exclaiming in baby speak how fun the wheel was and smiling winningly at him.  She followed him up and down the stairs next to the wheel.  He scowled.  She pointed at him and said, "Baby."  He scowled even deeper.  She showed off her jumping skills in front of him.  He glowered and turned away.

We played on the swings for a while.  Clara watched two little girls swinging on their tummies on the big kid swings. We found another slide we liked, but after a few rides down, a little boy with red hair asked could we please let him race his cars down it.

We wandered over to the softball game for a minute, and then we went home.