Ulysses and I went to Tenney Park. I had planned to go to Rev. Darryl Richie's installation as settled minister at James Reeb Universalist Unitarian Congregation this afternoon, but Ulysses was having a rough day. It would have been too agonizing for him to sit through the event in the sanctuary, where it was happening, and too pointless for me to sit through it playing with him in the nursery.

U and Don have been sick with colds since last week. Somehow I dodged that bullet. U seemed pretty much recovered from his cold, so I got him up earlier than usual -- around 7 am -- to get him started on the schedule we'll all be on starting tomorrow. That was rough. He fell asleep later, and woke up perky from that early nap, but then he took a tumble in the sandbox and split his lip.Very painful for a long time, to judge by the relapses of crying over the next couple of hours. Later, I accidentally led him to bonk the back of his head on the wooden frame of our futon couch. Ow.

As the day unfolded, the idea of taking him to Reeb seemed more and more like a setup for a nightmare for all of us. I wanted to support the Rev, but I think that bringing a screaming baby to his ceremony would not be the best gift.

So we went to Tenney Park, for the first time. Nice. They have one of those sand diggers, a heavy steel gadget like a steam shovel (except no steam or other motor, of course) with a tractor-style seat for a kid to sit on and levers to work that shovel and lift sand (or wood chips and gravel, in this case) and then dump it back down again. The whole thing is on a pivot, so you can twist round to dump the payload in a different spot than where you picked it up.

It looks something like the one on this site: http://www.detailedplaypro.com/sand-water-play.htm#12

U spotted it immediately all the way across the playground, amidst a bunch of other equipment. It was the only kind of thing there that he'd never seen before. He got my help to sit on the seat, but he had to lean way, way forward to reach the lever handles. And he wasn't quite strong enough to work them. Nor did he know what to do with them -- couldn't know at the outset that they were for scooping and dumping. (One lever moves the scoop up and down; the other tilts it so that it scoops or dumps whatever's in it.)

After several seconds, he let himself off the seat. I sat on it myself and idly scooped some stuff. Then I got up to move on to something else.

No dice. Ulysses directed me to sit back down and get back to work. He watched, silently and with a straight face, for several minutes as I scooped and turned and dumped, scooped and dumped. Sometimes he would put a hand on one of the levers or the joint by the sand scoop and follow the motion for several seconds. I might describe his aspect as studious, or even solemn.

Every time I started to get up, he would complain ("Uhn-nh!!"), grab my hands and guide them back to the handles.

Eventually it was OK for me to stand up. Then Ulysses had me help him back up on the seat. He leaned way forward, and I put my arms around his waist as before, to keep him from slipping off, to grip the tips of the lever handles. He wiggled them a little. He worked his way forward, so that he was straddling the rod that connected the tractor seat to the rest of the sand digger. That way he could get a better grip on the levers, and better leverage. He wiggled at the levers some more, experimenting with each -- how much he could manage to move it, what it would do. But here it was harder to keep his balance and stay seated.

All in all, just too big and heavy a toy for him, and too difficult to work. My mind was moving ahead to work out how to handle whatever frustration he would experience from ultimately not being able to work this thing.

U carefully let himself off the thing, not jerking or panicking when one foot got caught between some rods, but methodically, watchfully, moving himself around until he had both feet on the ground. He stood for a second and looked the contraption up and down, all around.

Then he turned around and headed for the jungle gyms.