Things my one-year-old tot likes to do: frolic in water!

Desmond has loved the water since he was a wee something month old.  He would love taking baths with me and loved it infinitely more than taking a sponge bath and sitting in his bath sling and getting warm water poured over him.

Our first bath.  It looks like I'm about to strangle him...and his face shows that he knows.

Strategically placed rubber duckie.  He was a great floater.

When we were first starting to float him.  He's got the beginnings of a WTF face.

When he was first able to sit up, we immediately put him in a mini tub to see how he would handle it and boy, oh boy, he puffed his little chest out, splashed all the water, and smiled the biggest toothless smile.

That's right, my kid doesn't have any color boundaries.  He loves pink tubs, pink toothbrushes, my pink shirts...

Our sad little swimming pool in the backyard.  Even Desmond knows how sad it is.  Poor guy. 

Desmond and his cousin Nico.  Nico didn't like hanging out in the water, and especially having Desmond splash him with water.  Also, check out the gut on my kid.  Is this normal for a 1-year-old boy?  Look at Nico's taut, toned stomach. 

I'm so lucky that St. Louis has (2 that I know of) awesome little parks with water fountains that kids could splash around in.  One was in Yogi Berra park (he's a native of St. Louis) in the Italian district (The Hill) and it's just simple: a water spout coming out from the ground.  The other one is in Tower Grove Park (a lovely, lovely park) more ornate and has those hide-and-seek things where water shoots up from a hole in the ground and you don't know where or when it will shoot out next.  Des loved both fountains immensely.

The first time we went to the simple fountain, we happened upon it by accident.  We were touring The Hill and had just gotten some gelato.  I still had 2 more hours before Billy was due back from school and I had seen a little park with some swings as I was looking for a parking space.  We went over and found the fountain.  I cursed myself for not thinking ahead and packing his swimmies diapers and swim shirt.  I looked around.  The park was deserted save for a few kids playing soccer in the field.  "Screw it."  I sat him down on the periphery of the fountain, enough so that his feet would get wet.

Starting off...

Inching closer and closer...

and getting soaked.

  The next week, we went to Tower Grove Park to check out the water fountain there.  Oh my goodness...it was like waterworks heaven.  Desmond was so excited he was literally...and I use that word in every aspect of its meaning...shaking.  He almost fell over he was shaking so hard.  I made sure to smear some sunscreen on him, then sent him on his way.  I was kind of grossed out a bit because I hadn't thought of buying him some water shoes (coincidentally, that weekend, I opened a giant garbage bag full of clothes that Christy had given me and lo and behold, there were some water shoes) since all I could think about is ringworm and all sorts of other footborne diseases.

I mean, how gorgeous is this fountain?  Desmond kept tripping over those little bumps (they housed spotlights for the fountain) and I would run over in my flip flops and skirt to make sure he was ok, but he would only look up at me and laugh.  and I would get wet.

Done for the day.  Isn't his little surf outfit cute?

We give Des a bath every evening before his bedtime.  He has cut down from never wanting to get out of the bath to getting out of the bath 10 minutes into bath time.  He stands up (we had to get him this little bath mat so he wouldn't bonk his head...and a cover for the faucet because one time, he stood up and Billy and I, although both sitting by the tub, he slipped and hit his face on the faucet.  It was the corner of his eye and it was bleeding so profusely...scary, scary, scary) and starts climbing out.  However, we were lucky to have gotten this video of him:



What a cheeky kid, eh?