Grand Opening

On Saturday, Harper and I took Nana to the grand opening of the Children's Discovery Garden at Wegerzyn Gardens, another one of the great parks in Dayton. We all had a fantastic time, despite only staying for about an hour because of the crazy crowd. I'm hoping to take Harper back this summer, when there might not be quite so many people there. I was a little concerned she was going to get trampled.

The first stop we made was at a tent where they were giving the kids rocks. Yes, rocks! Harper could've stayed right there all afternoon. Each child was invited to take a rock from a crate and brush it off. Then they were able to draw on the rocks with permanent (yikes!) markers. We didn't do too much drawing (I thought it was pretty brave of me to even consider lettering her hold that marker), but Harper toted the rock around for the rest of the day.

The children's garden was divided into all kinds of little sections. There were limestone tunnels, fountains, a little bridge, a stream, flower boxes with plastic crayons and fanciful bugs sculptures, bird houses made out of painted gourds, and other wonders. Harper did lots of ooh-ing and wow-ing as we walked through the garden. There was a playhouse with puzzles and games inside, but some feuding siblings kept us from further investigation of that particular spot.

There was a maze of sorts, with musical instruments throughout. There were simple things, like a triangle staked in among the plants and a basket of cow bells. There were also more complicated instruments, like a giant xylophone, which Harper will need to be a little bigger to appreciate.

(You can tell, by her open mouth, that Harper was concentrating very intently on making that bell ring!)

Surpassing even the tent with the rocks, the highlight of Harper's experience was our time at the sand tables. There were three different tables, at three different heights, containing very fine sand. There were little plastic plants to arrange in the sand and different tools to dig and design with. Of course Harper required nothing but the sand itself. It was as though one of the designers jumped into her mind and built the very thing Harper would love the most. How thoughtful!

She started to throw the sand eventually, which was our signal to leave that area. Unfortunately this logic was lost on Harper. Getting her away from the sand was no picnic. I'm glad Nana was there to help distract her! It was no consolation to Harper at the time, but I'm sure we'll be back there soon.