Blueberries are Griff’s favorite fruit (when there aren’t any peaches or blackberries around), so I was excited about heading out to Patchwork Farms near Chapel Hill today to do some blueberry picking with some other moms and their little ones.

Griff was in a hunting rather than a gathering mood, although he did try picking a few.

Sour berry face! This is why mommy told you to only pick the blue ones.

Most of the picking looked like this.

“Hey Griff, where are you going?”

“Griff! Griff! Come back! Want a blueberry?”

And Griff would return for a moment to stuff his face with blueberries, only to run off again.

It was hot. I stupidly decided to wear a black shirt and didn’t bring a hat for myself. Blueberries are tiny and take a long time to pick when the bushes are past their peak and you have to hunt for the ripe ones. Griff kept disappearing and wanting to play with rolls of chicken wire and harass the owner’s poor cat and jump on fire ant hills. Still, I managed to pick 2.5lbs of blueberries in an hour or so.

And now on to the part that Griff really enjoyed: the old plastic playhouse at the corner of the patch.

It had a sink!!!

And a window!

That you could totally bust out of!!!

Wheee!

And there was a door!

Did I mention that you could totally bust out of the window?!?!?

Just remember, it’s best to make sure that your bachelor pad is tidied up a bit before the cute ladies arrive.

We’ve been to the spraygrounds at Edison Johnson and Forest Hills in Durham, but we wanted to try taking Griff somewhere that had a baby/wading pool as well, so we drove out to my old stomping grounds in North Raleigh this afternoon to check out the version at Millbrook Exchange Park.

I didn’t even sneak over to my townhouse to peek in the windows and see how the new tenants have decorated the place. Aren’t you proud of me?

In short, we highly recommend it! The pool complex consists of a year-round lap pool which is covered by a canopy, and the outdoor sprayground/wading pool area, which is only open in the summer. There are standard large changing rooms with toilets, showers, and lockers. They were clean, if about as damp and dank as you’d expect.

The sprayground is large and has a variety of different fountains, water cannons, and a pretty intense alternating bucket system that dumps a gallon or two right on your head if you’re standing underneath it. The wading pool was 10″-18″ deep, and was much larger than we expected. It was the perfect depth for mom and dad to sit in and cool off, while not being too deep for a little kid to navigate safely. There were lots of families there, but it didn’t feel crowded. There were lifeguards on duty in both areas and it seemed clean and well kept-up.

The main difference I noted is that the Durham spraygrounds have rubber surfacing. There’s nothing but hard concrete here, so when Griff took his first tumble, he skinned his elbow and both knees, and grazed his forehead. A couple band-aids later, he was back in business. There’s also a fee to use the pool. Non-residents pay twice what residents pay, so we were out $6/adult and $2/Griff. (Should’ve brought along that driver’s license with my Raleigh address!) Still, it was worth it to check the place out. I’m not aware of a municipal wading pool in Durham, but if anyone knows of one, let me know.

Just a few recent videos and pictures of the Griffster that we thought were cute. Probably mainly of interest to his aunt and grandparents. 🙂

Griff has finally figured out how to ride on his Wheely Bug (the one that we scored on Craigslist for $15 a while back). He’s been shoving it around the room and gnawing on the antennae for months, but he was never very interested in actually riding on it until a few days ago. All of a sudden, he sat down on it and started pushing himself along, and that was that. (The thing dangling from him is the snake I knitted him back when he was a few months old. He puts it around his neck himself!)

Give him a napkin, a blanket, a scarf, a cloth book, or anything else similar these days, and he’s all about the “Where is Griffin?” game. (That’s Mister Rogers on in the background.)

And here are a few pictures from this evening. We stopped off at Northgate Park to let Griff run off some steam after he behaved wonderfully during a special dinner out at Tobacco Road (it was delicious, and a real treat).

Griff’s first trip to the beach was an exercise in parental sleep deprivation and a study in nap refusal, and Griff’s bottom first-year molars decided to make an appearance on the second day we were there, but we had a good time anyway. Fifteen months is defintely a good age for this kind of thing; I’m glad we didn’t try to drag him to the beach this time last year.

PS: Guess who got sunburned? Was it the two blondes who need to wear hats, shirts, and SPF 55? Of course not!

The little man was eager to see what that big thing was at the end of the sand.

Check out that huge bathtub!

Daddy introduced the wonders of the ocean…

…and demonstrated proper splashing technique.

By George, I think he’s got it!

Griff enjoyed playing with some of Daddy’s old beach toys.

Making sand “castles” with his cousin was also fun.

Uh oh, here comes a wave.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Griff also had his first carousel ride. It was getting way past his bedtime, so we thought it was wisest not to stick Mister TeethyCrankypants on a horse.

This past weekend was a whirlwind. Jag took Friday off so we could go to the townhouse and do some cleanup before the new tenants arrive on Thursday. We dropped Griff off with his grandparents in Wake Forest and then spent around 2 hours vacuuming, cleaning dusty countertops, letting the hot water run to get the hot water tank refreshed, changing air filters, trimming the bushes around the deck, and plugging in the new CO detectors. Hopefully we’re all set there.

Saturday we drove to Mount Olive to see Jag’s grandma for her birthday. She’s getting around well these days in a motorized chair that totally fascinated Griff, and he got several rides. 🙂

Griff spent most of the time running around with his great-grandma’s broom and dustpan set. Has there ever been a kid more obsessed with brooms? He tired himself out to the point that he conked out in the car 5 minutes after we left.

He totally missed out on the rainbow on the drive home.

Sunday was Jag’s second Father’s Day. We stopped at a surprisingly not-very-packed Life & Science Museum and enjoyed a few hours there. We used to spend the entire time in the gated toddler area, but now that Griff is so active and into everything, we feel that it’s probably better to keep him out and let the really little babies have the area to themselves so he doesn’t accidentally trample a new crawler. Toddlers are a bit on the oblivious side when it comes to stomping on little fingers and feet.

Here you can see Griff and Daddy in the sandbox, wearing their new “matching” shirts.

Griff sorta gets the banging-on-the-drums thing now.

But really, he just wants to run off with the drumstick.

For dinner, Jag requested chicken pot pie with a biscuit crust. Can you identify the shape of the cookie cutter I found in the drawer? 🙂

Griff turned 15 months on the 17th, and we had his 15-month checkup appointment this morning. He’s 34 inches tall and weighs 28lbs, 13oz. In three months he grew 2 inches and gained 2lbs, 12 ounces! Yeesh. Here he is after his somewhat traumatic exam, which involved 2 injections in one arm. I think he’ll survive. 🙂

Griff and I went to a play date at Forest Hills Park this morning. This is the first time we’ve been there when the water has been turned on, and it was such a blast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Griff have so much fun at a park before! He was soaked, cool, and happy. The new swim trunks/diaper his Aunt Beanie gave him worked perfectly. We definitely need to look into getting him a little pool for the back yard.

Lately our free time on the weekend seems to be spent going to parks, often multiple parks in one day. Today’s selections were Little River (morning) and West Point on the Eno (afternoon), where the construction/landscaping work that’s been going on for the past few months is finally finished, and looking very nice!

The rangers at Little River seem to be engaging in some wishful thinking with the signage on their butterfly garden. 😉

There is no “taking a walk” with a 13-month-old, unless said 13-month-old is in a stroller and mommy and daddy are doing the walking. Left to his own devices, the 13-month-old wanders aimlessly from interesting object to interesting object, periodically getting hysterical when the “interesting object” is a filthy garbage can, patch of poison ivy, rusty charcoal grill with pointy edges, icky old potato chip bag, unfriendly strange dog, etc. that the 13-month-old is encouraged to not play with.

It’s a teeny bit frustrating to take a kid to a park full of trees, frogs, birds, bugs, and other cool stuff, and find that the thing they most want to do is play with their own stroller. Sigh.

Well, at least he liked this dandelion!

The most interesting encounter of the day was in our own back yard. Jag spotted this snake and took Griff elsewhere while I snapped a bunch of pictures. (Jag and I have opposing spider/bug and snake phobias, which is useful in these situations).

It was very skinny and maybe a foot and a half long. It climbed a tree pretty impressively, too.

After a moment of panic while trying to identify it from various online sources (“Oh crap, that was a copperhead!”), we’re 99% certain it was a harmless juvenile black rat snake, which apparently resembles a copperhead at first glance and is often killed by mistake for that reason. I don’t mind killing bugs and spiders, but I’d feel bad chopping up a perfectly harmless snake for no reason. Especially since I kinda like snakes.

For some reason we always forget how close the various entrances of Eno River State Park are to the house (like, around 15 minutes, tops). So today we packed up a once again refusing-to-take-a-morning-nap Griff and headed over to Few’s Ford for some splashing around before lunch.

Griff loved it. It’s the first time he’s been in any body of water bigger than a bathtub, but he charged right in, even though the water temperature was somewhere between bone-chilling and screech-worthy.

Mommy even showed him how to throw rocks into the water and make a big “plunk”.

Griff conked out in the car on the way home and has been sleeping now for about 2 hours. 🙂

Jag, Griff and I went strawberry picking at Double R Cattle Services yesterday afternoon with our friend Jenn and her adorable son. I was kind of hoping for some Kodak moments involving Griff romping through the fields while gorging himself on strawberries, but he decided not to take a nap in the morning, and about halfway though the 15-minute drive to the farm, he passed out in the car seat.

Luckily, this made Jag’s assigned task of minding the little ones pretty easy, because Braed was asleep, too.

Jenn and I picked and picked and picked.

While we toiled away in the fields, poor Jag had to contend with this.

And, even worse, this!

Griff woke up to the sight of strawberries strewn at his feet.

He finally roused himself enough to eat a few, but he was not in a great mood after missing his morning nap and having a fairly short afternoon snooze in the stroller.

I ended up with about 6.5lbs of berries, most of which went into the freezer for Griff. I definitely need to go back for more before the season’s over!

These videos are probably only of interest to people actually related to Griff, but by all means, forge onward if you want to see some cute toddler antics. 🙂

Griff has been fascinated by the vacuum cleaner for some time. Before I clean the carpet in the living room, I put all the toys away and put the big stuff, like his wagon, lawn mower, etc, on the couch and love seat to get them out of the way. Griff has recently started dragging his lawn mower off the couch so he can “vacuum” along with me. It’s very cute, and it’s much less annoying than what he used to do, which was play with the cord and try to remove all the attachments. 🙂

Griff is working hard on his spooning skills as well. We finally bought the poor kid some toddler spoons, which are much easier for him to handle than the long-handled baby feeding spoons he’d been using. We also got him a new sectioned bowl that sticks pretty well to his tray. We were pretty impressed by his applesauce-eating skills this evening! Around 30 seconds in, he realizes how intently we’re watching him and gets a big goofy self-conscious smile. Heehee.