Toddler playground skills

My ambitions were somewhat grand. Saturday I had a timetable of markets,  Rollerskating, orchestra and Vietnamese. The reality was. Rollerskating-non event, as kid fell asleep. Orchestra-goal achieved! Vietnamese with friends-goal achieved! We had playground trip where Duckworth's fears about how soon his son would be acting out, were verified (14 month old ran away; also intently watched the naughty actions of the older kids). 

Our dinner was great, Pho Hoan, which is quieter, more kid friendly to eat in, and had great mango smoothies, great pho and great broken rice dishes. Sunday's goal was open garden. This was slightly more challenging-had deleted the email invitation, yet organised friends to meet us there... but it turned out even more successful. I sat on a hill whilst son ran around with the offspring of familiar people/couples, Nick and I admiring things from nature that we couldn't name-"look at those trees. Those flowers. Those shrubs. Those sheep". Andy snapped photographs and came back with reports of Japanese bath houses, an indoor library, a house with a sense of arts and craft... I went exploring, escorted by kids aged 2.5 to 8 years old. The kid traipsed fearlessly down a rocky staircase, past a pond/waterfall and let Rafi help him climb into the Japanese bath house. He wasn't perturbed by a game of chasey-three against one (him) and kept playing and socialising and tickling and laughing. 

Later we went back to Nick's and discovered a Steiner-like transformation -Rafi on the deck knitting, kid kept busy with Raf's new tree house, all non-wooden toys out for roadside collection/the likes of us. (As predicted two years ago, Annabel has emerged from the hills and sought out community, via Steiner system). We took home two Tonka trucks and an art deco kids seat. The kid has been setting up tricks with his slippery dip. One is to jump the length of it and land on the grass ("Big jump" he calls out, priming himself). The new trick was to prop the slide up against his truck, so that he could land in the tip section... I helped him problem solve his way out of attempting that. The last trick was to slide down and in one seamless move, spin and sit down in his new chair. Mission was achieved.