Fun in the Sun!

We had so much fun this morning. We went to Old Town Aquatic Park in Lewisville with the Early Childhood PTA. It was such a fun water park! I can't believe we haven't gone sooner. They have a huge pool with water features all through it. There are two water slides, a lazy river, 3 "spraygrounds" where water just shoots up from the concrete, plus there was water shooting out of hoses throughout the pool. We played for a long time, stopped for lunch, then played some more.

This was the first time Nicholas has been to a public pool so he had never seen a lifeguard before. I talked to him about how important the lifeguard's job is. At one point, Nicholas crawled up on to a little wall that seemed perfectly fine to me and another mom but a lifeguard blew his whistle and told Nicholas to get down. I think Nicholas was embarrassed by it because he got very shy around the lifeguards after that. However, before we left he had warmed back up to them and was smiling and waving at all of them.

On the way home we talked about how bright the sun was. Nicholas likes to imagine (or have us imagine for him) what inanimate objects might be saying to us or to each other. He asked, "What is the sun saying to us?" I replied, "It is saying, 'Everyone enjoys my sunlight but be careful because I can burn your skin if you stay outside for too long!'". Then Nicholas asked, "What is our sunscreen saying to the sun?" I replied, "It is saying 'No, you can't burn Nicholas and Mommy because they have sunscreen on! I'm going to protect them from sunburns!'". Then Nicholas asked, "What is the sun saying to our car?". I replied, "It is saying that 'I'm shining bright to help you see but I also make it hot outside and in your car." Then, of course, Nicholas asked, "What is our car saying to the sun?". I replied, "The car is saying, 'You can shine on me and make me feel hot but I'm not going to let Nicholas and Mommy get hot. I'm blowing cool air on them with my super-duper air conditioner!" We continued to discuss what various things said to each other all the way home. It's fun to play along for a little while but Mommy's stories lose some of their creativity after 15 minutes or so.

Once we were home, we got cleaned up and started talking about some other fun things we could do later this week. We talked some about fishing and Nicholas asked, "How can you fish and fly at the same time?" I didn't understand what he was asking so he said it again, "How can you fish when you are flying? You know, when Daddy talks about Fly Fishing?" I realized his assumption about what Fly Fishing is and couldn't help but smile to myself. I explained to him that in fly fishing you use a bait that looks like a fly and you make the fly appear to be alive by the way that you cast the line. The fish can't help but bite into it when the fly finally lands on the water. He seemed to understand and then said he wanted to fly fish. I told him that he needed to fish with his standard rod and reel for a few more years before he could start trying to fly fish. He didn't like that answer but then he happened to notice that his glow sticks from last night were still glowing and he forgot all about fishing for the time being.