The Wednesday playdate I’d been trying to arrange might not work out. We’ll see. If nothing else, alternatives can be arranged, both in time and location.

Instead of yesterday’s playdate, we ended up at Thamien Park with a handful of our buddies from the North Park playgroup that we’ve been going to every Tuesday and Thursday since before Tristan was even a crawler. There’s a great structure intended for 2-5 year olds, so we put the babies (who ranged in age from 8 months to almost 2 years) and parents up top and had the parents block the exits so nobody fell down. They had a great time!

I could, however, do without Tristan’s knack for ninja-ing sand and rocks into his mouth. I know that the best way to get the kid to stop doing stuff is to make sure it gets no attention – which is hard when it involves a possible choking hazard. Extinction, behaviorwise. But since it involves possible rocks and/or woodchips when they are present, I’ve had to go finger-sweeping his mouth a lot – this makes going to places with possible rocks infinitely stressful for me and it’s not the most respectful way for me to deal with behavior because I keep having to act on an emergency basis. He is still too young/little/has a crappy teacher on that topic/whichever to actually follow directions – he will at best comply after a moment or twelve of thought. Most of our discipline around here involves letting him know which actions are right and deserve attention, which means he’s usually fairly pleasant.. but keeping him out of danger is difficult without physical intervention.

In any event, playtime was fun other than the mystical earth-eating abilities of my toddler.

Today was the aforementioned North Park playgroup, which involved some very fussy babies. Tristan walked cheek-first into a table corner. I was right across from him, watching him walk around kicking a large ball and dangling two smaller ones from his hands. His ball-maneuvering limit must be two, because he’s usually far more careful about corners – he walks past this particular one twice a week for an hour! He’s got a bit of a bruise and a cut below his eye, and he has a bruise below his other one as well. There were a few occasions where Tristan busted out crying (due to teething or possibly a headache from the corner jab) and was playing with a cabinet door, and when he busts out crying he sort of forgets to hold himself up and keep himself safe. Poor baby. He looks sort of funky right now.