Sandman

After reading back over the last few posts, I realize that the management of Walt's World has committed a tremendous faux pas.  We promised a post about Walt's long-awaited birthday gift but did not deliver.  I'm sure that some of you have lost untold quantities of sleep in your anticipation, and for that, I am truly, truly sorry.  Those responsible have been duly reprimanded.  I will now try to make up for it by including lots of pictures which (you may have noticed) the last few entries have been lacking . . . but first, the story.

So the long-awaited birthday gift in question was supposed to have been a tricycle.  Walt had been eying one that another kid at the park had for awhile so, being my father's daughter, I did all the necessary research, found the perfect trike and ordered it from Target.com a few weeks before his birthday (you know, in JANUARY).  Because that was soooo long ago, I've forgotten all the gory details, but the dream of the perfect tricycle died with a final email sometime in April saying that hell would freeze over shortly before our tricycle arrived (oh, and that they appreciate my business).  Order canceled.

When I ordered the trike, which had a handy parental push bar in the back for lazy kids, I pictured Walt and I taking leisurely strolls around the neighborhood and down to the park in perfect 72-degree weather.  But now it's May (or it was when all this happened  -- work with me) and it's getting hot.  Suddenly those walks are looking a little less pleasant and little more . . . well, sweaty.  And that's when the splashy Target flier arrived in the mail with a picture of an adorable tot playing happily in his adorable sandbox.  Sandbox!  I won't have to walk around at all!  In fact, I can sit in a chair in the shade, sipping lemonade and reading a magazine!  Perfect!  (Curses on Target . . . they always find a way to get my money one way or another.)

What I forgot is that sandboxes have one major drawback . . . sand.  Despite our best efforts to keep it out of the house (special sandbox-only shoes, thorough brush-downs before coming inside, etc.), our floors now have a distinct grittiness to them.  As Josh says, it's all of the negatives of the beach with none of the positives!  (You can always count on him to look on the bright side.)  Oh well, Walt loves it, and I guess that's what's important.  I guess.  Here's what you came for . . .

Please note that each of those 50-pound bags of sand you see was LOVINGLY wrestled into the cart at Home Depot by Mommy.  You know, the cart that has the race car attachment for the kiddies and is already impossible to drive?  Just imagine it loaded down with 400 pounds of sand and 30 pounds of kid.  We were a force to be reckoned with, let me tell you.

Walt "helping" with the construction of the sandbox.

The finished product!  (Grumpy Daddy predicts that the cute awning will soon be sprouting mold, the spoil sport.)

Testing it out with two of the old faithful trucks.  (Note that this picture was taken before the sandbox-only shoe rule was instituted.  The fancy blue shoes Daddy bought on the Internet are no longer allowed in.)

A satisfied customer.

This pained expression is the one that Josh usually wears when Walt is playing in the sandbox.  Josh, being his parents' son, likes things to be clean.  And we basically just gave Walt a big box of dirt and told him to go nuts.  Which he does.  I had to go inside for two minutes the other evening to check something in the kitchen.  When I came back (I swear it was only two minutes), there was a ring of sand in a two-foot circumference around the sandbox and Walt was sitting in the middle, completely covered in sand, looking a bit bewildered. 

"I froed it!"

Yes you did, Sweetheart.  Happy birthday.