The Cure To Cabin Fever

Life in the city. I'm sure I've complained about it before but it's still such an adjustment for me. People talk about the rain (we live in a rainy city) as though it's toxic and children spend so much time indoors it makes me feel sick. But, like any life challenge, you can either cry a river over it or you can do some creative problem solving, a little goal-setting...and get the f*** out :)

The empty, cold, rainy parks were getting way too boring for me once the summer went away so here is what we've come up with to get our butts outside everyday:

Check out the local dog parks -- Cool pet owners, great conversation, dogs dogs everywhere dogs (we love dogs!), and Very Attractive Men.

Visit the duck pond -- We go 2-3 days per week. A nice stroll around the duck pond located in the middle of the city sends her into another world of excitement. As a bonus, I get to hear, "ducks! ducks! ducks! ducks!" all the way home.

Nature walk - actually we haven't gone on a nature walk just yet as I'm still trying to find some nature... However, it's great for children to out into the natural world on a regular basis. They benefit hugely from seeing the effects of the changing seasons on the world around them. It just creates a wonderful and never-ending cycle of questions-curiosity-exporation-discovery-and... more questions!

Geocaching - OK, so I haven't started this yet either but I've got a couple friends go... It's an extremely nerdy, hightech game of hide and seek. You use a GPS, log on to http://www.geocaching.com/, find the coordinates of a hidden cache, toss your toddler into your Ergo and head out to find it. The caches that are located throughout the ENTIRE WORLD!! Of course you can hide one yourselves.

Help out at the community garden - I just joined the neighbourhood community garden society. There are two new gardens being built before spring and since it doesn't snow here *sniff sniff* I can just wander up to the new site at anytime and get digging. Of course we'll make sure to bring her plastic shovel and bucket... She won't notice she's not at the beach :)
Looking at the "shug!" (Slug)

No, she didn't...

Garbage day...

Halloween nature walk (people say she looks a lot like me) ...

Comments

Jenn said…
The empty parks are so sad, aren't they? I really don't understand why we are the only people in them. It's not even that cold!!!
November 22, 2009
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