Double Swings

I looked out into my back yard today and watched a very nice man named Rob work on our “playground”.   The children started calling the play set a, “playground” when they were very small.   Since that time it’s been used more than any play set in the general area of houses.   In part it’s because of our location with children in different directions.   But there’s a part of it that’s because of the set itself I think.

My husband and my best friend’s husband got to talking early on about what to get, with Matt being of the opinion their Woodplay set was the way to go.   Woodplay is one of the more expensive brands, but will outlive the child’s childhood and then some.   It’s heavy-duty as well as being adult-rated (a selling point for me because I love to swing).

So Woodplay is the way we went and ever since, we’ve had children playing on it.   The adult-rated and heavy-duty is no joke.   One of our neighbors got a set from Costco and after a complicated set-up process in which he hadn’t gotten around to staking it into the ground, it blew over and partially down the hill during one rather windy storm.   The Woodplay set would only blow over in a tornado.   I don’t think a hurricane would even miff it.

We’ve added things to it over time, mostly swing options I switch out from time to time but there was the steering wheel (that did nothing), the rock climbing wall up to the fort and the spy glass.   We made the base into a sand box and figured out how to turn the slide into a waterslide into a baby pool.

I wanted to do something else but we didn’t have a lot of options short of adding whole sections of play fort to an already small yard at a large cost.   But we could add another swing A-frame.   This would double the number of swing options from three to six which would accommodate twice the children and I wouldn’t be swapping out swings as often.   We would have to move the ladder and slide to the next side over, but that would work out well for the yard dimensions.   We decided to remove the rock climbing wall as it was rarely used now that the children were older.

So today the nice man named Rob worked all day long on adding the new A-frame, rearranging the various pieces of the existing structure, tightening all the bolts, power washing and then re-staining the whole set.   He was here the whole day and thankfully got done too late for children to be disappointed they couldn’t play on it because the stain needed another day to dry (lest their clothes be indelibly stained cedar-color).

Tomorrow I’m out there swinging on the set, making sure there are no squeaky bolts…or maybe I just want to have fun swinging.

The Big Boy Update:  My son spent most of the day playing on his Nintendo Switch, which he earned after months of getting stamps for various things.   He got to one tough spot that I couldn’t get him through either because a narrow bridge over lava with cannon being fired at you is tricky.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is finally done with residual itchiness from her dual bladder infection, but now she has fierce heat rash or eczema.   She doesn’t seem to be overly upset by it.