Park du jour

It seems that summer has finally arrived! It has been a beautiful week of sunshine and temps in the 70's. It just doesn't get much better than that!

On Wednesday the girls and I made a quick trip out to the beach to celebrate Father's Day and my dad's birthday. It was kind of cloudy in town when we left, but at the beach I was pleasantly surprised to find clear skies. I didn't make it to the beach because my aunt and uncle were visiting, so I stayed at the house to play catch up with them while Grandma and Grandpa took the girls out to the beach. They tried to get a kite up while they were there, but the wind wasn't cooperating. It was great to have such a nice day to celebrate with dad, and a lot of fun to see my aunt and uncle during their annual trip.

This morning the girls and I had dentist appointments before we could go explore our new park. This was M's first real visit to the dentist, other than the two minutes she sat in a chair (on my lap) for the dentist to make sure her chipped tooth was okay when she was 18 months old. I was a little worried about how she would do. First of all, little M has a hard time sitting still - she likes to be on the move. Secondly, she can be very shy with new people so I thought she might require sitting on my lap again. And I really didn't anticipate her cooperating with opening her mouth, since she rarely does when I try to brush her teeth. Luckily, all my fears were unfounded. She bravely went to her chair by herself as they showed all three of us to our chairs. She opened her mouth when she was supposed to. They were amazed at how well she did with the x-rays, and she did just fine with the cleaning. I guess they started polishing her teeth with watermelon flavored toothpaste, but she didn't like it so they switched to cinnamon - but otherwise she was a model patient! I asked her if the dentist told her anything. She said "yes, she told me to stop biting my nails." Yeah! Maybe we'll get somewhere with this!

I wasn't worried about C at the dentist. She has always been very cooperative at the dentist office. However, today she refused to open her mouth to have her teeth polished. Even when she picked out the toothpaste flavor, she still wouldn't open. It sounds like they did finally manage to polish her teeth, but possibly without the toothpaste (or maybe they have one that isn't flavored and not gritty). At any rate, C was very excited to show off her, literally, squeaky clean teeth. Her x-rays showed that she has two permanent teeth at the bottom that should be pushing those baby teeth out any day now. I can't believe my girl will soon be losing baby teeth! Now I guess we'll really have to try to step up efforts to get her to stop sucking her fingers, without making it a battle of wills. Ugh!

Now we were free to check out our new park. The one I chose for this week is a rhododendron garden that is pretty close in to town. I thought that since it had been such a wet, gray spring that I'd probably still be in time to see the rhodies in all their glory. Well, it appears that we arrived a few weeks past their prime - but it was still a beautiful garden. The girls were a little unhappy to learn that a "park" does not have to have swings and slides, but the fact that there were lots of ducks, geese and squirrels helped a little with their disappointment.

By the way, I recently learned that our local library has a "cultural pass" program where you can check out passes for a day for various museums and parks. I wish the list was more comprehensive, but still, who can complain about getting in for free. This way, I can go and not feel frustration that the girls are done in a hour and I don't feel we've gotten our money's worth yet. So anyway, I'd recommend you check and see if your library offers a similar program. If it weren't for this program, I still would never have known about this garden.