Friday, August 22, 2008

Summer Legs



The Cruze kids like to play outside. A lot. More than anything else. Now that school's started they are very sad that it's limited to a couple of hours a day. You can tell how much they prefer the great outdoors by examining their legs. All eight of the littlest limbs around here are a constantly evolving display of scrapes and bruises and mosquito bites. We have never gone through band-aids so quickly. Even Lydia, who does not get to go outside nearly as often as the big kids, fell off her bike once and got pretty scraped up. When the big three are out there it's only a matter of time before one of them comes in because they're bleeding. And every morning I can count on Josh complaining about how itchy he is (apparently Josh is much tastier than the others). I don't mind. I'm glad outside is where they want to be, you know, getting their exercise and using their imaginations and all that. It's worth a few boxes of band-aids.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sigh. I should send this post to a mother i saw today. We were talking about activities for her overweight 12 yr old child. I asked about a bike-- he was very excited for one, but mom refused, afraid of the dangers of riding a bike! And we're not talking bit city streets, they are in the suburbs.
troy

Unknown said...

I came over from cally...
I remember spending all my summer time outside as a child. Your kids are making great memories for themselves, not to mention getting great excercise and building their imaginations...defintitely worth the "summer legs"!!
my leg is itching looking at the one of all the bug bites!

tiff said...

I have so many studies I've read/heard about that back up what a great mom you are letting your kids play like that....

It is kind of freaky for me to let my kids outside unless they are in the backyard. And it's not safe now because there is a pool and the cover is off so they can drain it and replaster it before we buy the house. I have mixed feelings about a pool.... I'm a worry wart, but I guess my kids will just have to learn to be good swimmers!

Do you enforce sunscreen with your kids? Any tricks you want to share with me?