A walk in the park

Yesterday evening we brought Salma to the big park for the first time, and she got a chance to stretch her little legs! Boy can she run fast for a one year old! It's not really running, but more like speed walking. She got on the slide a few times too but I would have let her play on it more had she been wearing long pants (easier to slide down).

The grass was quite wet and a little muddy at places, but she enjoyed walking on the grass the most. She fell down only once. It was a windy day and several people flew kites. I don't think Salma is at that age where she can enjoy kite flying, but I sure love flying kites. Back when I was in 8th grade we all had to build our own kites. And I remember the entire class walked to the nearest park (Primrose Hill) to fly them, and after that (I'm pretty sure) we played softball. Some people's kites didn't fly well (we had to build them in groups). But when your kite can fly, you just have this exhilirating feeling. They were box kites. We had to run with it in order to get it lifted.

The park where we were at sold kites. And they were in various shapes of the same size, and had cartoon characters printed on them. There was a little boy and his father waiting to buy a kite. The father chose this "manly" Ultraman kite, but the little boy (he must have been under 5 years old) wanted to buy the Pooh Bear and Friends kite. And the father got quite mad at him and kept saying buy the Ultraman one. But the boy kept quiet, and didn't understand why his father was so mad, and still pointed at the Pooh Bear one. I mentioned it to my husband, who said if he had a son, he would be pretty surprised too if his son chose the Pooh kite over the Ultraman one. I asked, "what's wrong with the Pooh one?" and he said, "It's not manly enough." But he's just a boy. And maybe he likes the Winnie the Pooh and Friends cartoon on Disney Channel better than the Ultraman show.

Kids identify with that sort of thing. What's wrong with Pooh? Pooh is a boy bear. I guess I won't really understand these things if I'm not a man. I think it's silly for boys to play with G.I. Joe dolls. Cos they're still dolls... u know. But if they played with robot dolls, that's okay, cos they're not human dolls. Do you get what I mean? But when you're a small boy, like at toddler age, I think it's fine for him to have a Winne the Pooh teddy bear...