Scooters FTW

For the last 2 or 3 days we've been having beautiful weather - finally - but bizarrely, when we drove to Rowntree Park yesterday, we found that it was closed due to flooding. We haven't had much rain of note for over a week, but last weekend the Ouse was spread out over its flood plain as we drove over it on the A64. I guess it takes the park staff a few days to get the park back in order once the rains have subsided, but it did seem odd to be standing there in the bright sunshine after a week or more of dry weather looking at a notice about flooding.

The main reason we were heading off to the park was that yesterday morning Jacob and Sam's new scooters were delivered and we needed to go somewhere to try them out. Although I've been muttering to myself recently about how many toys they have and how spoiled they are, I decided to buy these for fairly practical reasons. At the moment, when we go to nursery in the morning, Sam goes in the pram and Jacob rides on the buggy board, but imo, he's starting to be a little bit old/big for the board; the paradox of Jacob is that he's far too lazy a boy to walk every morning, but he will happily go on a scooter. This is probably because he sees quite a lot of his friends doing the same thing and there's nothing like the example of his peers to get Jacob to do something (if only I could arrange for him to see them get their hair cut with clippers and drink milk out of a proper cup!).

Anyway, he had a whale of a time with his scooter in the Museum Gardens (the one safe public space that wasn't flooded) and even though he had a tumble after going a little too quickly down a slope, he was a brave little soldier and didn't cry. He carried on scootering once we got home and even took it upstairs a couple of times to scoot round the landing on it. At the moment, he's begging to use it again and I'm refusing as Doug is having a much needed lie-in and I don't want Jacob arriving at his bedside on his scooter :) One of the good things about the model I've bought is that it folds and locks, which renders it useless to Jacob unless I unlock it for him. Excellent scooter usage control system!

So tomorrow we're going to give it a whirl. I'll set off for nursery 5/10 mins earlier than normal so I don't end up getting bad tempered if he can't go as fast as I want or if we struggle crossing the main road etc. We're supposed to be having an outing somewhere today, so no doubt the scooter will come with us and I'll try and get some photos of him in action. Unfortunately, Sam is having a little difficulty getting the hang of the scooter and is a bit frustrated by it - but he'll get there, no doubt - Jacob was bossily demonstrating how to scoot to him most of the afternoon!