Last summer, while his mom was a way on a work trip to Ecuador, Diego and I ended up at a new playground in my adopted hometown of Dover, NH. We had just dropped off my oldest son and I wasn’t ready to haul poor Dieguito into another hour-long car ride. So we stopped at this playground with me thinking that he could get dirty in the sandbox or wet on the splash pad. Well, he ignored the sand and went whole-hog for the water play. Yesterday, this time while attending a festival in Newburyport and not parenting solo, we encountered a splash pad at the charming center of the busy seacoast town. His mom wasted no time helping me disrobe our child down to his diaper and long t-shirt so he could play. And play he did! Like a total kook, he went back and forth from the sporadic water jets for about thirty minutes, an enormous grin spread across his face and his eyes wide with impossible glee. At one point he came running back, smiling and dripping, sat on one of the bench-sized rocks that surrounded the pad upon which his mom and I were sitting, and said, clearly and hilariously “Mommy... so fun!” I only mention the previous year’s splash times to point out that my soon-to-be-wife and I are wonderfully in sync. Many parents would not have stripped their kid down, but for us, this was the only option. I love that I have someone by my side in this adventure that thinks so much like I do.
