The slight shift in in temperature, required to make the air coming in from the sea feel soft instead of chilly, has come. The sun is warming the playgrounds from early morning, and suddenly we start to meet friends that we have not seen since autumn. It is like the children and their parents (for the most part mums except for me) are slowly coming out of hibernation. Everyone is bringing their sandbox toys, there are little blue and pink and purple and yellow shovels and buckets and sandtoys everywhere.
Whether we go to to little playground close by, the big playground towards the city, or take the bike to the playground by the sea, we meet happy shining little children wanting to enjoy playing without freezing or needing to wear too much clothes. My son is always looking forward to meeting other children and their parents and oftentimes he forgets about me and focuses on trying to take and play with the other kids’ toys or explaining to their moms that the shovel is blue and so is the bucket, and that their is a truck over there and a helicopter in the sky.
This week we also started to bring toys other than balls to the playground. My son’s favorite is a plastic power shovel. Yellow, he told everyone he met. Yellow. And he carried it from the house to the playground all by himself, not letting me touch it. At the playground however, the other kids’ toys suddenly seemed much more exciting. Why use my own toys when I can use others’ seemed to be the motto of the day. So in the sandbox was the big price: another boy was playing with his construction vehicle toys. And he had three of them. My son set out for them as soon as we entered the fenced in sand box, but instead of becoming upset with my son wanting to play with the toys, the friend became very happy to see my son’s power shovel.
They looked at each other and simply switched toys, playing happily with the new ones, exploring them to the fullest. The friend’s mum and I shared our similar experiences of the hardest part of the day when out playing being when going back home. Sure enough that was true also this day. It became noon and time to hurry home and prepare lunch, but when it came to returning the toys my son strongly protested and explained in no uncertain terms that he wanted to continue playing and did not want to go home at all. Apparently the friend shared my son’s sentiment, so when finally the friend’s mum and I exchanged our sons’ toys, we were both carrying a crying little boy.
Luckily children seem to not be of a resentful nature and soon they were both happily waving sitting in their prams heading home for dinner. On the way back I was thinking that I probably should upgrade my son’s toy collection with a dump-truck as well – when more kids venture outside I am sure there will be much more toy-sharing this spring.
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