Water play – water, water, everywhere

Spookily at the moment, water is taking a big part in my life…the main part of my job is water at the moment, so there’s no getting away from it when N gets involved with water as well.

Generally N’s really good with drinks.  He can drink out of an open cup with no problems, with or without handles, but if we’re on the move he’ll have his sippy cup for ease and hopefully, lack of drips.  Although that wasn’t quite going to plan this weekend.

He’s decided it’s more fun to drip water everywhere.  I’m thinking that’s not really helped by encouraging him to help water the flowers in the garden!

I was hanging up the washing, and wondered why all seemed quiet from the other room.  Tiptoe into the hall to find him sprinkling his water over the hall radiator and watching it dribble down to the floor.  Hmm, do the naughty voice, try not to laugh at him closing his eyes to avoid looking at me so I can tell him off/ask him to apologise.

Then I see into the living room…big wet splodge mark on the carpet, plus smearing where presumably he’s tried to hide all evidence.  He’s not quite grasped the fact that he needs to get a towel or kitchen towel to mop up spillages (although he’s quite happy to get the mop out if the fridge is leaking water!).  At least it was water, I think.

So I decide we’ll head outside for a bit.  Ask him to put on his sandals, help him get them straight on the floor to find they’re sopping on the fabric soles.  He’s poured all of the remainder of the water onto each sandal.  Those sippy cups must have more capacity than I thought, as there seems to be a lot of water.

With the weather being so hot at the moment, really I should be letting N outside in a paddling pool.  We do have one (previously used as a ball pit), but I forget about such things until I see other people’s garden water play featured on blogs, Facebook and Twitter feeds.  It seems like a lot of effort – blowing up the pool, making sure N’s sufficiently covered and in the right nappy, plus trying to find a shady spot out of the sun.  Not in our garden as there’s no hedge or trees and the fence doesn’t provide shade.  Then there’s the issue of filling up a paddling pool.

We do have a play water table, so yesterday I wiped it round, then got various receptacles to start filling it up.  Nope, we don’t have a garden tap/hose.  Well, I tell a lie.  We do, but due to house design and where the fence cuts off the lodger’s garden, it means the tap is on their side instead of ours.  Bad planning.  So it’s a case of filling bottles from the kitchen sink and walking them through the house, out the patio doors to the garden.

At least it entertained N for a bit (probably longer than actually playing with the water table itself).  To half fill a standard sized water table it took (I couldn’t find a washing up bowl or bucket to use, and the cracker box still had crackers in):

• 5 journeys with a Bottle Green bottle
• 5 journeys with a small kids watering can
• 5 journeys with a standard size water bottle

It was a lot of journeys, and could really have done with more water still.

We don’t really have ‘water toys’ either, so a few Tupperware containers, a bottle, watering can, and a spoon (strange request).  N just wanted to use the water from the table to water the plans in the garden, so it was quite a successful half an hour.

Maybe next weekend, if the weather’s still good, we’ll get out the paddling pool for some decent water play.  If I remember.