Swamp-mess

Last week, P woke up passionate about swamps. He hatched a plan to create a such a setting, in our house. I told him this made me nervous :)

I love four. Its not that I didn't love 0 - 4, its just, with a really, really focused kid, logic and empathy are a nice addition to the mix. And so he excitedly explained his plans, listening to my concerns (namely, flooding and disaster) and skipped off to manifest his wee mission...

All went well as he introduced BB to the swamp, to the alligators that lived in the swamp, the fallen tree BB could warily wander across only to, oops! plummet into the mire. Half of P's animal collection eventually joined the mix and the watery, muddy bin began to flirt with my comfort zone. But it was a fabulous natural lesson in volume...

Then, P wanted BB to swim down a waterway that led into the swamp. He thought it best to move that to the bathtub, "maybe, Mama, you wouldn't mind if I dumped the swamp into the bathtub? You could carry it in for me... I'll go start the water warming!"

At three, this would have been my breaking point. He would have thought me horribly inconsiderate not to sacrifice the building's plumbing for his potting-mix riverside jungle. (This is one of those times I thought about the ease of living in suburbia with a yard.) At four, he was able to eat a quick lunch, dreaming all the while, pack a bag of swamp toys, maliciously cackling to BB all the while, and skip to the park, singing all the while, in order to complete his task.

And so we spent a dreamy day using a natural water run in the park as a river. Fabulously located right by a drinking fountain, we could refill our river to P's heart's content and drown or scare BB as often as necessary. We were muddy from head to toe (especially after P realized how fun it was to jump in the wet mud) but compared to the mess it would have created in our flat, I felt pretty fortunate :)

P, post mud canoodle, hitting high berries with a stick:


A muddy Little man: