Mud Pie anyone?

Today was the first real day of cold, cloudy, rainy weather. And it was the first Saturday in months that we weren't either traveling to some exotic European location or at the beach in Rhode Island - which means the better part of the day was spent with errands and whatnot. But the sun broke through around 4pm and I got a call from my friend Steph and out we went to Emerson Park. Our back yard. Our Brookline outdoor space. Our lawn of fun.

And one of the huge reasons we love Brookline so much is that there are tons of these spontaneous get-togethers that lead to happy, playing kids and parents connecting over the daily drama or child-rearing conundrum.

Today, Maia went out on her roller blades. She of the athletically skilled, well-balanced, energetically adept person was hunched over in a helmet that was too big, skates that stuttered down the sidewalk, and all knock-knee'ed like there was no tomorrow. And she could not have been happier.

And once we got to Emerson Colby found a pool of fresh mud. And I had this immediate reaction of "Noooooooooo!" "Get out of that muddddddddddd!" But then......

what kid doesn't want to play in mud? who has ever played in mud and thought, 'nope, gross, no thanks.' Who hasn't had that immediate visceral reaction to ooey-gooey mud? Okay, maybe some....but there was this total suck-the-morrow-out-of-summer and get as muddy as ya want reaction. And thankfully, my peers didn't disagree. Big bowl of mud fun. And in the midst of mud projects and mud droppings and mud bombs Colby's friend, River, yells with his black, muddy hands in the air, "Mud is life!"

Awesome.