I must be doing something right

We've had beautiful weather this week - just perfect, really - so I decided to take the boys to the Morton Arboretum today. The tadpoles at the toad pond are mid-transformation and we wanted to see them; you can actually get right in the water and catch them in your hands. And there are always small rocks that N can pick up and drop back in the water so everyone's happy.

There is also a stream that runs downhill in the Adventure portion of the Children's Garden and the kids can get in the water and move the rocks around and build and tear down dams to alter the course. Both my boys had their shoes off, splashing around and climbing the rocks surrounding the stream. Knowing their history, I packed an entire extra outfit for both of them and we needed it - N doesn't know how to keep his butt out of the water when he squats down and P just likes to get wet. They were both soaked from about mid-chest down when we got back to the car. N's shirt was soaked, primarily thanks to a teeny little boy who dropped a big rock right by N's head when he was bending down to get more rocks - shirt, hair, face, arms, all soaked. The kid's mom missed it completely and a minute later was praising him for being such a good boy and not throwing rocks. ?!? I'm not a particularly good playground mommy but I'm also completely non-confrontational so we just moved to a different part of the stream. I can't stand parents who threaten to end their child's playtime if they do something "one more time" and then never follow through so the kid continues to throw rocks or splash other kids or hit his sister to the accompaniment of the parent's continued, "if you keep doing that, we're going to leave!" Gah. We left instead.

But anyway, my kids had an awesome time as usual - entirely the reason we have the membership there. It's nice to be able to go for just a couple of hours and not feel like you have to stay longer to get your money's worth.

And the best moment of the day was at the beginning - P likes to go through the hedge maze right by the visitor's center so we started with that. There are 3 possible entrances and I asked him which one he wanted to start with - and he came back with, "Since you're such a generous mom, I'm going to let you pick where we start." Awwwwhhh. Heart melts, puddles on the ground. What a sweetie! So I guess I'm doing something right!