Category Archives: Parenting

Parenting research and personal anecdotes.

Camping

Our family spent the Fourth of July long weekend camping at Moraine Park Campground. It’s a very civilized campground with flush toilets! This campground was also the site of Calvin’s first camping trip back in 2010.

This time I tried a new way to organize camping food. All the stuff that needed to be cold went into the cooler. But everything else got portioned into my cloth grocery bags. I had one bag for each cooked meal. So, in the first bag went everything I needed for the first meal that didn’t need to be chilled. The next bag contained everything for the next meal, minus the items I needed for the first meal (like the camping pot) and so on. Then, at the end of each meal I redistributed the things that would be needed later into the appropriate bags for their next meal. This system worked surprisingly well and prevented me from doing a lot of the rummaging I’ve done in previous trips. I would have preferred to use clear plastic bins for each meal but this was a lot cheaper.

Thursday
We left for the campground Thursday evening around 5ish. As soon as we got there I put up the bug shelter for the picnic table and then started to make supper. Since we were expecting to arrive around supper I made it super easy. I brought a bag of freeze dried pasta primavera for each of us and a pound of asparagus. In retrospect, I can’t believe I never thought to bring asparagus for camping before. It’s incredibly easy to prepare and cooks within minutes.

After supper we put our stuff in the tent (we have a fantastically huge family tent), got everything organized. I read to Calvin for a while and we all eventually fell asleep.

Friday
Thursday night I slept the best I can remember in a tent. The air was pretty warm most of the night and Calvin slept straight through without waking. In addition, nobody else’s child was screaming which was a definite plus. At around 5:30 I was woken up by a loud noise. At first I thought it was the wind violently whipping the tent around. Then I realized a huge herd of deer had decided to go pounding through the campground. We got the tent door open soon enough to see them stampede away. It was not uncommon to see a couple of deer in my backyard growing up but it was still pretty interesting to see a whole herd of deer wandering around a campground.

For breakfast we had scrambled tofu that I had prepared back home, pastries from the Bavarian Bakery, and strawberries. I heated up the tofu in my cast iron skillet so cleaning up was really easy. I just dumped the extra tofu into the compost sack¹, wiped out the skillet and then heated it on the stove again to sterilize it.

Our goal on Friday was to hike up to Emerald Lake. Since Calvin loves transportation, and parking at Bear Lake is impossible, we took two shuttle buses to get there. Calvin obviously can hike when he wants but he spent much of the time complaining. However, it was still a successful hike for him.

On the way back we stopped by the Moraine Park visitor center and I got seduced into buying three books. Two are books about park ranger adventures and the third was a picture book about scat. Calvin also decided he wanted to use his allowance to buy a stuffed fox.

For supper we were contemplating hot dogs. However, they didn’t start selling wood till 5:30 so I read to Calvin out of one of the new ranger books. Around 5:30 Jaeger left to get the firewood and it promptly started raining. I changed supper bags and started getting things ready. The bug shelter provided some protection from the rain but not for a particularly large area.

While mom was visiting she took me shopping to Costco and suggested I try using the prepackaged Tasty Bite entrees. They’re shelf stable and it turns out you can heat the pouches up by just putting them in boiling water. This has the distinct advantage of keeping a pot from getting dirty. I paired them with boil-in-a-bag brown rice and called the supper a success. Given the rain it was particularly nice not to have to spend a great deal of time cleaning up.

Saturday
Saturday I attempted to make pancakes. I haven’t had prior good success with pancakes while camping but gave it another shot. I used a Krusteaz mix so I only needed to add water and then oil for the cast iron skillet. It took me a couple of times to get the cooking time and temp right but eventually I ended up with pretty decent pancakes. Probably a first for me.

Jaeger was having trouble coming up with hiking routes that were both interesting and something Calvin could reasonably be expected to do. Eventually he settled on going over to the west side of the park and taking the Big Meadows trail. This time we explained clearly to Calvin that we didn’t want to hear any moaning or no smores for supper. This hike went much better, especially during the short time when we were walking as the same speed with another family that had kids close in age to Calvin. The meadow was nice but I didn’t find it quite as inspiring as a lake as a destination. On the way back we saw a moose.

Since Calvin did so well, and it was way too hot, we decided a treat was in order and drove to Granby to get ice cream. Then we returned back over Trail Ridge Road to camp.

There wasn’t any rain in the evening so we were able to eat our veggie hot dogs and smores. To my surprise Calvin seemed to think the smores were ok but he only wanted one.

Sunday
Sunday we ate a fairly boring breakfast of oatmeal then packed up and came home. Remarkably we were on the road by 9:30 so got back home in time to unpack and put things away in a orderly manner.

All-in-all I think it turned out to be a pretty successful camping trip though Calvin can definitely use more practice hiking.

I wanted to minimize dish cleanup so we brought compostable dishes and had a bag we put all the compostable stuff into. It worked fairly well except the bag stunk up the car toward the end. Next time it needs a sealable bin. ↩

Bookmark

For Mother’s Day this year Calvin’s preschool had him create a bookmark. This is one of the more useful Mother’s Day presents I have received from daycare/preschool because I always need more bookmarks. The front has a drawing which I suspect is suppose to be me. I have very large feet. The back has typed written descriptions of what Calvin must have told his teachers about me. It must have been in the form of fill-in-the-blank but they aren’t explicit about which parts Calvin filled in. I found it pretty amusing:

Gem

Her hair is brown.
My mom’s favorite food is food I
don’t like.
My mom likes to wear whatever
fits her.
My mom’s job is working at home.
My mom’s smart because she knows
I don’t know if she’s smart.
My mom works hard at I don’t know
if she works hard.
My mom relaxes by exercising on the
treadmill in our basement.
My mom tells me a lot to hurry a lot
when we’re late for school.
I’m happy when my mom reads
to me.
I love my mom because she loves me.
I know my mom loves me because
she hugs me a lot.

Love,
Calvin, age 5

Mother’s Day 2014

Pineview Park, Boulder, CO

Several weeks ago Calvin and I made it to another park. However, then life got busy and I never got around to posting about it. We visited Pineview Park which is relatively close to his preschool.

It’s a nice playground with a “nature” theme that was just remodeled in 2013. It even has sand!

The playground structure itself has a lot of different climbing options. Calvin ventured out on the rock but didn’t want to try climbing down that way.

He did venture up the petite climbing wall though.

And the ladder.

An interesting feature is the “tree trunk” was created to be hollow to allow climbing ladders up and down.

The park also has a nice covered area for parents to sit on and both regular and bucket swings. As an aside, the Boulder park website claims there are restrooms, a water fountain, and a parking garage which is incorrect I assume that must be a copy/paste job from another park.

All-in-all, it’s a cute park and is close enough to Calvin’s preschool we might visit it again.

Summary:

Features	Curved slide, “wooden” ladder, rock, small climbing wall, tree house, swings, bucket swings, accessible digger
Surface Material	Poured Rubber and some sand
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	Seating area for parents in shaded and there are some trees, though I’m not sure it’d shade the playground
Picnic area	Yes, one picnic table
Parking	Street parking, the best parking is on Cloverleaf drive then you walk down a path and over a bridge to the play structure
Pros	Nice new equipment Secluded Sand! and a large field by the playground for running around
Cons	No restrooms

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Shanahan Ridge Park, Boulder, CO

The weather was marvelous today. I spent the morning working on money but after lunch Calvin and I went thrift store shopping and then stopped by Boulder’s southernmost park, Shanahan Ridge Park. The Shanahan Park Page, on Boulder’s site, said the park was “small” but I didn’t understand how small till we got there. The picture below shows you most of the park.

Parking turned out to be quite tricky. In addition, Google maps took me a couple blocks past the park and into an apartment complex. I followed Google’s directions hoping it knew about a parking lot I didn’t but, alas, it was just confused. I backtracked and decided the road next to the park was too narrow to park on the street. Eventually, I parked on Smuggler Way which had a path to the park.

As I stated above, the park is really small. However, it did have a very unusual feature: a human sundial¹.

Human Sun Dial: Stand along the centerline opposite the current day of the year with your arm raised above your head. Your shadow will point to the current time. *Tempis Fugit*

Hours are arced around the the sundial:

I had Calvin try it out but I think a taller person would have worked better. It seemed roughly accurate, within an hour or so².

The sundial amused me a lot more than Calvin. However, even though the park is really small Calvin had a blast running up and down the slide area. When I looked at the city’s picture of the park, I thought the slide had asphalt on either side but it turned out to be poured rubber.

They also had a random hole that kids could run through.

Lastly, the park did have two regular swings and one bucket swing. Even though the park is small, it was completely overrun with kids so Calvin had to make do with the bucket swing.

It was a really interesting park to visit. The parking’s horrible but it was a fun visit.

Summary:

Features	Straight slide, bumpy slide, climbing rocks, hole, sun dial, swings, bucket swing, stairs to nowhere
Surface Material	Poured Rubber
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	No
Picnic area	No
Parking	Horrible parking options. Try parking on Smuggler Way and then walking.
Pros	Seems very popular with kids. Human sundial!
Cons	No restrooms Bad parking options Really small

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As an aside, does anyone know Latin? Google is giving me the definite impression that “Tempis Fugit” should really be “Tempus Fugit.” ↩
I didn’t see any notation of when it assumes daylight savings time starts ↩

Meadow Glen Park, Boulder, CO

I signed Calvin to participate in a study on Monday at the Cognitive Development Center but we had about an hour after preschool before we needed to be there. Monday turned out to be remarkably warm, for winter, so I decided we should visit a park first. I went to City of Boulder’s playground list and decided to try out Meadow Glen Park.

Meadow Glen Park is a neighborhood park. It’s a nice park to walk to if you live in the neighborhood. However, unless you’re specifically trying to tour all Boulder parks, it’s not a park you would normally drive out of your way for. It has all the basics but not much else. Calvin’s favorite piece of equipment was the Vertical Pipe Climbers:

In the picture above, you’ll also see there’s a red playhouse-type structure. I’m not sure what it is suppose to be called officially. It’s bigger than the normal playground playhouses. Outside, along either side, there’s a bench that can be sat on. Inside, there’s a fair amount of space and a couple small seats that kids can perch on.

One of the other unique features of this park is it has a sun dial. It seemed accurate to within a 1/2 hr or so.

The playground also feature several swings and traditional-style playground equipment. Unfortunately, the spiral slide was roped off with a note that it needed to be fixed.

The park backs up to City of Boulder open space on two sides. It’s not as scenic as Foothills Community Park but is still very relaxing. In addition to playground equipment there’s a small basketball court and the park connects to a path that runs beside the Empson Ditch. Once Calvin got bored with the playground he challenged me to several “races” across the bridge that spans the ditch.

I don’t think we’ll go back to this park, we still have a lot of parks left to explore. However, it did provide a nice break in the day.

Summary:

Features	5-12 year old equipment, spiral slide (currently broken), playhouse, swings, bucket swing, sun dial, verticle pipe climber, horse spring riders, steering wheel, storefront panel, bubble panel, Corkscrew Climber, Loop Arch Climber, chinning bar,
Surface Material	Mostly pea gravel. Some poured rubber.
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	Most of the playground is unshaded. Playhouse provides shade as do some mature trees on the west side.
Picnic area	picnic table (no shade)
Parking	Streets parking and then a short walk
Pros	Peaceful, backs up to open space Neighborhood park so it’s not going to be over-run with people Interesting playhouse
Cons	No restrooms

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Wonderland Lake Park, Boulder, CO

Well . . . the weather report misled us. It said today was suppose to be sunny and 60 degrees. It actually was cloudy and in the 30s with a couple snowflakes drifting down. However, I told Calvin we would go to a park today so we went to the park after Sabbath School. This time we went to Wonderland Lake Park which was almost on the way home.

Getting there turned out to be more confusing than I expected. I had looked briefly at the map but my phone’s battery was dying and I wanted to save it for pictures so I didn’t use it for directions. I missed the turn the first time but eventually figured out that from Broadway I needed to turn west onto Poplar. It’s a “neighborhood” park which I think means there is no parking lot. We parked on Poplar street between Quince Cir and Quail Cir.

The park itself is beautifully situated. Wonderlake is fairly close and there are hills in the background.

There’s a nice sand area with an elevated sand table and two diggers. One digger has a seat and the other one doesn’t so it can be used standing up or by someone in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, the snow had melted into the sand and frozen it into one hard mass so it was hard to do much digging.

An informational sign at the park says the park was designed for ages 2-5. Though, most of the equipment seemed a bit “old” to officially be for 2-5 year olds. However, they did have an interesting caterpillar tunnel as well as a little covered house.

The main play structure is probably officially rated for 5-12 year olds but probably interests younger kids more. It’s a traditional style but looks fairly new.

One of the panels was a double steering wheel.

They also had a periscope panel and Calvin pretended he was on a submarine.

Like Harlow Platts Park, they had a tire swing. I was expecting I would have to push him a lot. However, after the picture below, when the tire swing was practically motionless, Calvin fell off, bumped his head and didn’t want to get on after that. I’m not sure how he fell off, I was zipping my coat up and missed it. However, it seems weird he fell off this swing when I was spinning him very fast on the other without any problems. Perhaps he got overconfident.

We didn’t stay very long at this park. It’s a nice park but the weather was chilly. However, before we left Calvin managed to make some sand dunes (plural, he got upset when it was implied it was only one sand dune). If you look closely at the picture you’ll see a rock on top. That is Calvin. Next to it is a stick. That is Jaeger.

Summary:

Features	5-12 year old equipment, spiral slide, periscope panel, steering wheel panel, caterpillar tunnel, sand area, accessible digger, digger, elevated sand table, small playhouse, swings, bucket swing, tire swing, straight slide
Surface Material	Mostly rubber squares. Sand in the sand area and pea gravel by the tire swing.
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	Small shaded structure with a picic table.
Picnic area	A small picnic table
Parking	Streets parking and then a short walk
Pros	Very scenic area. Neighborhood park so it’s not going to be over-run with people Nice variety of equipment Good sand equipment
Cons	No restrooms

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Harlow Platts Community Park, Boulder, CO

The past couple of weeks have been fairly snowy and cold. However, today’s weather was forecasted to be in the 50s and I decided we needed to take advantage of the weather and go to a park. After speech therapy, I took Calvin to Harlow Platts Community Park which is very close to Fairview, the high school Jaeger went to. This morning our backyard still had several inches of snow so I brought along a towel in case I needed to wipe off the slides. Viele Lake, adjacent to the park, was covered in ice. However, the playground itself was completely snow free and the slides were even dry!

The playground at the Harlow Platts park is pretty traditional and perhaps a bit on the old side. However, I don’t know if it really was old or if it was just so traditional it felt old. The equipment itself was in good shape. Calvin’s favorite feature by far was the tire swing. I probably spent 20 minutes pushing him on it and earned the honor of him telling me I made him go even faster than Kyle¹ I did have some minor qualms about how fast I was spinning him but he survived without falling off :)

The park also had a traditional play structure which the safety experts will tell us is for kids ages 5-12. Calvin climbed up the corkscrew and slid down the covered slide once but other than that ignored it.

They also had a play structure for 2-5 year olds. Calvin wandered around this a bit more because it was windy and this structure was sheltered better.

The tunnel made a nice escape from the wind.

Calvin tried the overhead glider but it’s still a bit tall for him. I lifted him up and pushed him to the other side but it was too awkward for him to really enjoy it.

The park has both bucket swings for smaller children and decent sized swings for older kids. However, Calvin didn’t stay on them long because it was uncomfortable with the blowing wind.

Calvin did enjoy playing a little bit with the pull-up bar.

There was also a decently sized sand pit which looks like it could be interesting closer to summer. There’s no provided sand toys but it’s a big enough area he could bring his shovel and bucket and spread out a bit.

Overall, this was an ok park. I expected more from it since it’s close to the recreation center but it didn’t really overwhelm me. It looks like there are some nice paths around the lake that might be nice for Calvin to ride his bike around.

Summary:

Features	5-12 year old equipment, 2-5 year old equipment, covered slide, track ride, tic-tac-toe panel, corkscrew climber, swings, bucket swings, sand area, tire swing, spring riders
Surface Material	Mostly pea gravel/coarse sand
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	Shaded structure right next to the playground but the equipment itself isn’t shaded.
Picnic area	One small, two-person picnic table and then a couple more closer to the lake
Parking	Yes
Pros	The lake is picturesque but there’s a fence between it and the playground to keep toddlers from wandering too far. Tire swing!
Cons	The tire swing was nice but other than that it wasn’t a particularly exciting park.

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Calvin’s preschool has a tire swing and Kyle is one of Calvin’s preschool teachers. ↩

St. Mary’s Square Playground, San Francisco, CA

The last couple of weeks have been busy. Calvin and I went out to visit Nana, Jaeger’s mother, early so she could have more time with Calvin. Than the rest of the family arrived a couple of days later. After Christmas we flew to San Francisco and are decompressing from family time before going to visit Jaeger’s grandmother. This was our second full day in San Francisco. We went to Chinatown and wandered around the streets for a while. While there, we stumbled across a playground in St. Mary’s Square¹. To my surprise it was mostly deserted . Maybe it was just the wrong time of day for families to be their with their children.

The playground is small but has a nice selection of equipment. The equipment seems fairly new but is showing some sign of wear and tear. The first thing Calvin tried out was the double teeter-totter-type thing.

Next, he played for a bit with the Playworks structure which was very similar to the one at East Boulder Community Park.

They also had a train which looked like it could entertain a variety of ages.

The last piece of equipment was a semi-traditional playground set that is probably officially designed for 5-12 year-olds. Calvin enjoyed climbing on the rope ladder but other than that seemed to get bored of it fairly quickly.

They also had some swings outside the fenced area but we didn’t get around to those. It was a nice little park and provided a great opportunity for Calvin to run around and get energy out before once again braving the Chinatown crowds.
Summary:

Features	5-12 year old equipment, 2-5 year old equipment, rope bridge, slide, new-style teeter-totter, sand play works, train, swings
Surface Material	Poured Rubber and sand
Restrooms	No
Water fountain	No
Shade	Yes, mainly provided by the tall buildings around the park.
Picnic area	No.
Parking	I believe it’s on top of a parking garage but we walked there.
Pros	Nice place to take a break in the middle of the city Provides a couple of playground pieces for a variety of ages
Cons	Eqipment showing some wear and tear, though most is still fine. It’s a city so there’s homeless people, though none were near the enclosed part of the playground.

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Also yet another statue of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, they’re everywhere. ↩

An Epic iPad Saga

A little over a year ago I bought an iPad as an experiment. We were planning to fly to Hong Kong and my main purpose for buying the iPad was to see if it’d work as an entertainment device for Calvin. Beyond that, I had no thoughts of what I would use it for. Since I wasn’t sure what my use case was, I didn’t want to spend a great deal of money on it. So, I bought a 16GB, Wifi-only, refurbished iPad2. That device was the best thing ever invented for keeping a child happy on an airplane.

<digression>
Just recently I saw an article whose author seemed to think the end of western civilization was nigh and it was the fault of lazy parents who didn’t want to entertain their kids the old-fashioned way on airplanes. I read this article in stunned disbelief. I do not view myself as an overly strict parent but we do have limits on screen time, types of snacks, etc. However, the moment we get on the plane I have one goal: survive the plane ride with Calvin and me both sane and, preferably, happy. If that means letting Calvin watch 10 hrs of video and eat the occasional piece of candy, I can live with that. When traveling to Hong Kong we were traveling for 23 hrs straight. Of that time, Calvin was grumpy for about 5 minutes. That, my friend, is priceless.
</digression>

Calvin is the main user of the iPad but I do use it for a couple of things. My biggest use is trying to learn Chinese characters via the TrainChinese app. Calvin uses the iPad to watch movies, play games, and also play some educational apps. I’ve also created some “movies” of some of Calvin’s favorite books. I scanned the pictures in the book and then synced the audio book to the pictures. Calvin seems to like these quite a bit and will listen to the audio book while working with legos and occasionally glancing at the pictures.

I’m fairly happy with the iPad but I do have two complaints. First, 16 GB is no longer big enough. I’m ripping more and more of Calvin’s movies for the iPad and it’s starting to fill up. This is a fairly minor complaint and it was self-inflicted. My biggest complaint with the iPad is it doesn’t have a lot of good parental controls. I understand iOS 7 has better parental controls than the prior version but it’s still not at the level I want. I want to be able to have different profiles such as the “airplane” profile which lets him use pretty much everything installed and then a “normal day” profile which doesn’t let him watch movies and use the “game” apps without a parental override while still allowing access to the “educational” apps.

Because of the two complaints above, I started considering whether or not it made sense to get Calvin his own tablet while letting me keep the iPad (16 GB is plenty for what I use it for). I waffled for quite a bit and finally decided I couldn’t really justify the money. So, I resigned myself to the inferior parental controls and started looking for solutions to the space issue. I investigated a couple of options, including a couple variations of wifi drives. One of the biggest problems I saw with dragging a separate drive along is power. I’m not so concerned about storage space for the iPad on domestic flights. I’m worried about international flights. The iPad has a great battery life and most of the wifi drives I looked out would die significantly before the iPad. Of course, I could bring even more batteries with me to keep the hard drives charged but it seemed like it could get clunky fast.

While looking for storage options, I stumbled across several posts detailing how to use the iPad Camera Connection Kit to provide extra video storage. It sounded very kludgy but also like it’d probably do what I needed. The camera connection kit/SD card wouldn’t require any extra power and it is also pretty small. This would also allow me to swap out movies during longer vacations (my iTunes is on my non-portable kitchen computer). I ordered the kit and a 16 GB SD card and hoped for the best.

The camera connection kit was scheduled to arrive today. I prepared supper early so as soon as the package arrived I could start fiddling and wouldn’t have to be distracted by minor things like food :) The package arrived and I eagerly opened up and inserted the SD card into the camera connection kit. Then, I went to find the iPad. It was sitting, ever so innocently, on the kitchen table. Calvin had been using it earlier but was now occupied playing Legos with Jaeger. Before plugging the adapter into my iPad, I turned my iPad on. That is, I tried to turn my iPad on.

When I hit the power button on my iPad, a curtain of dark gray advanced about 1/3 of the way across the screen and then retreated. The rest of the screen stayed blank. I tried again, same thing. I though that perhaps Calvin had run down the battery so I plugged it in to my computer and saw that it still claimed to be at 50%. I asked Calvin if he had dropped the iPad recently. He looked a little sheepish and noted it had only been dropped a little bit from the couch, accidentally of course.

Now, I know for a fact that this poor iPad has been dropped a fair amount by Calvin. Often at distances higher than the couch. However, I had a bad feeling that this had been one drop too many. Just to be thorough, I tried a reset and then a restart. Other than the background briefly changing to a lighter gray, nothing happened. I was able to hook the iPad up to iTunes and it appeared to transfer data fine so it just seemed to be some sort of display issue. At this point, I was pretty convinced it was broken but decided to have iTunes attempt an update and restore just to see. No luck.

Jaeger suggested I should make an appointment with the Genius bar. I was a bit dubious because I was pretty sure they would just tell me it was broken. If I was lucky, I thought they might have a way to diagnose exactly what was wrong and then give me the option of having it shipped off to be fixed for some indeterminate amount of money. The problem with this is Calvin and I are flying out on Tuesday. Yes, I’m spoiled but I did not want to fly alone with Calvin without some sort of entertainment device for him.

I made the appointment with the Genius bar for a little after supper and then set to researching my tablet options. One of the first things I looked at was how much it’d cost to get another refurbished iPad. The cost was about what I expected. However, the major sticking point was there didn’t appear to be any way for me to get one of these iPads by Tuesday. If I was going to buy a new iPad, I want the 32 GB model. Those looked like they’d cost around $600. Given recent events I was very reluctant to hand over a $600 tablet to Calvin. I turned my attention to Kindle Fires as a possible stop gap option. Best buy had several 32 GB Kindle Fires available for under $300. From what I’ve heard, the Kindle Fire has some of the best parental controls of any of the tablets. I talked to Jaeger about it but he was worried about being locked in to yet another vendor’s proprietary weirdness. His argument had merit so I checked and Best Buy also had some 7″ Nexuses. That seemed a reasonable option to get us through the Thanksgiving trip and then I could order a 16 GB refurbished iPad for myself later.

After supper our whole family piled ourselves into Motoko to go visit the Genius bar. We got there, they checked us in, and settled in to wait our turn. They had a cute kids table with 4 tethered ipads on it loaded with kids games. I thought Calvin would be fascinated but instead he wanted to sit in my lap and listen to me read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Eventually a tech came up, took a look at my iPad and proclaimed it dead, as expected. What was completely unexpected to me was he then offered to sell me a replacement 16 GB iPad 2 for $250. That was a better price than I’d seen online so I figured it was worth it to go ahead and order my replacement iPad now, even if it wouldn’t arrive in time. To my astonishment, he told us he’d be right back with it. I hadn’t realized he’d been talking about getting me a replacement immediately. That’s probably the best customer service I’ve ever had from an electronics manufacturer. Once the tech came back with the “new” iPad he poked a couple of buttons, we handed over our credit card, and then were on our way once again with a fully-fuctional iPad.

Given we once more had a working tablet, I decided it did not make sense to follow our original plan and buy a Nexus for Calvin at Best Buy. So, we went home and I synced it and everything appeared to be back to normal.

I was delighted that the experience turned out to be so cheap. However, I still had only a 16GB tablet. So, my purchase of the camera connection kit wasn’t going to be wasted after all. Following the Lifehacker directions, I created the DCIM folder and 100DICAM subfolder. Then I moved a test video file over and renamed it DCM_0001. It was a mp4 file which I had been led to believe should work fine. I plugged it into the iPad and was happy to see the iPad recognized the file and seemed quite happy to give me the option to import it. I imported it and then clicked on the Camera app to try to find it. Based on the instructions, I was let to believe it would appear in my camera roll. I didn’t see it. I tried several other things and tried to figure out where I went wrong. I tried different file extensions and still couldn’t find the videos. The iPad definitely thought it was transferring the files, it would ask me for confirmation when I requested it import something it thought it already had, but I couldn’t find them. Finally, I figured out my mistake (which you may have already noticed). I had been looking in the Camera app, not the Photo app. On my iPad I only use 2 of the 4 statically placed apps: Safari and Mail. As a result, I apparently have developed a blind spot in actually seeing the Photos and Music Apps. Now that I’m finally looking in the right app, everything is working perfectly.

Of course, the biggest problem with this scheme is that all the videos are going to have really bizarre names: DCM_0001, DCM_0002, etc. I need to come up with some sort of index option that is relatively easy to use. That’s probably a project for tomorrow.

Foothills Community Park, Boulder, CO

Tuesday we took an unplanned visit to Dakota Ridge Park because the weather was so nice it seemed wrong not to go to the park. While there, I talked to another mother who said that the Foothills Park was very nice. She inspired me to go check it out.

This is a “community park”, versus a “neighborhood park”, so it covers a fairly large area. I looked at it on Google maps and was able to guess where I thought the playground equipment would be. However, I wasn’t sure how to get to it. We entered the park but I decided to turn south which took us past a play structure by the community garden. However, it didn’t look large enough to be the playground equipment I had seen on the map. So, we retraced our steps and went to the north side of the park. Once we got there, it was obvious that the north side was suppose to be the main playground area.

The view is pretty impressive. As the name suggests, it hugs the foothills. It also looks like it has a lot of paved paths so it might a good place to take Calvin to ride his bike.

The playground area is divided into two sections. The bottom section contains fairly traditional playground equipment that contain hints of boatness.

Among other things, they had a periscope.

They also had ladders which Calvin thought were like the ladders on the fireboat we saw in Hong Kong.

In addition to the periscope, they had a lot of other panels on the equipment: several different wheels, “fan” panel ¹, gears, and a “spelling panel”.

There were a lot of different climbing options to get into the structure including several rope ladder variations.

Calvin had fun playing on the lower structure but I think he would have had even more fun with a group of kids where they could have play-acted being on a ship. After a bit, we went around to the upper playground equipment.

This equipment was more contemporary, the same sort of things that the Dakota Ridge Playground has. I was initially skeptical of how non-traditional this style is. However, after watching kids play on it, it obviously offers a lot of upper body exercise. There was a little girl playing and it was amazing how, using just her arms, she was able to hoist herself all around the ropes and “hammocks.” Like the little girl, Calvin enjoyed scrambling all over the equipment.

While Calvin was enjoying the equipment, I wandered around to see what else was on the top level. There were a couple of swings including regular swings, bucket swings, and a molded bucket seat. Then I went over to where there appeared to be a covered slide that went from the top area down the bottom area. However, it was completely fenced in with no gate. Eventually, I realized that you were suppose to climb the rock wall to get into the enclosure and slide down. The slide was interesting in that it was a tube but had clear pieces interspersed so it wasn’t too dark inside. I called Calvin over and he got a kick out of climbing up the rock and then going down the slide. The sun was in a bad position so I was only able to get a picture of Calvin climbing up.

It’s a nice playground and fairly close to Calvin’s preschool so I expect we’ll visit this one again.

Summary:

Features	5-12 year old equipment, covered slide, bridges, track ride, periscope panel, gear panel, spelling panel, chimney climber, corkscrew climber, wavy web climber, vertical climbers, sky rail climber, small climbing wall, climbing cables with orbs, “playshell” seat, “rocking tube”, twisted ladder, small rock climbing wall, swings, bucket swings, molder plastic bucket swing
Surface Material	Poured Rubber
Restrooms	Yes!
Water fountain	Not sure
Shade	There are quite a few shaded picnic shelters.
Picnic area	Yes, quite a few. Some are available for renting.
Parking	Good sized parking lot
Pros	Good variety of equipment Provides both traditional and modern playground eqipment Restrooms!
Cons	No sand but you can’t have everything.

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After looking it up, it was apparently suppose to be an hourglass panel except there was no sand. ↩

Kiesa's Mutterings

Rarely updated entries on my life

Category Archives: Parenting

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