"Too bad it's raining outside"

The weather here lately has been a little moist, to say the least. In fact, for the past week or so, it has been mostly rain, with the occasional cloud break. This morning, some massive rainstorms moved through the area dumping somewhere around 2-3" of rain on an already soaked ground, causing some huge floods and lots of runoff.

Some of my favorite childhood memories come from playing in the rain and flooded creeks that surged after storms like these. As a kid, my brother and I would often go out when it was really storming to investigate the nearby creeks and ditches, build dams, throw stuff in the fast moving water. We weren't worried about getting dirty, or wet, so the rain itself never bothered me. It was the loose, unstructured play that fewer and fewer kids seem to get these days.

Rainy days really bother Mandy, not just because she loves the sunshine, but also because it limits the outdoor activity time Noah needs to fully exhaust his energy. But when I heard Mandy say those words a few days ago, I thought, why not just take him out in the rain? He's not going to care that it's wet and messy. You've got a rain jacket, and an umbrella. Probably easier said than done when chasing two kids, and trying to keep the house clean.

But I didn't have those problems today, so I grabbed a pair of old shoes (one of many Mandy thinks I should have thrown out long ago, but keep for just such an occasion), put Noah in his water-proof fireman's boots, and a size-too-small rain jacket, and out the door we went. It was still raining, at times pretty heavily, but if he noticed at all, I couldn't tell. I asked him if he wanted to go exploring, and let him lead the way. We ended up at the flooded high school football field next door, where the field was ringed with ditches ranging from 2-12 inches deep of water, and even a drain where floodwaters poured leaves and other grass down a hole to nowhere.

We spent a good hour walking around in this mess. He didn't miss any opportunity to walk right through the deepest part of any "lake", stomping to make a splash as often as necessary, insisting that I follow him, which I did. The tops of his boots were only about 8 inches tall, and after I heard splashing sounds well after we were out of the water, I peeked into his boots. Being waterproof works both ways. In shorts, there's not much to stop water coming into the top of the boots, especially when you make it a point to walk in the deepest water possible, and I found they were filled with a good six inches of water.

No worries with him though. I asked if he needed to stop and empty out his boots, and he did stop, but then looked at me like I was crazy. He said, "No, I don't have any water in my boots." and kept on squishing along. My shoes didn't sound much better.

I tried to convince him to go home after a while, when even my rain jacket didn't keep me from getting soaked. Still recovering from pneumonia, I'm not sure my doctoer would have approved me playing in all this rain, but Noah insisted he wanted to keep "exploring", so I let him lead me. We walked onward, eventually making it to the Trolley Trail. Mandy saw us walking near the street and pulled over on the way to a doctor's appointment with Elliot. Noah was delighted to see her, but seemed to be pretty casual about why she was out in this mess too.

We kept walking, kept spashing and kept having fun. Now more than half a mile from home, and worried about his sockless feet inside wet rubber boots, I offered to carry him for a while if he agreed to head home. He told me ok, since he was thirsty. That offer may have been a mistake, as he insisted that I "Run super, super, SUPER, fast!!!!" about every 20 yards on the way back. I think blisters would have been a better lesson.

Where to explore first...?

Finding the occasional pool.

He walked a quarter-mile track doing this.


Dropping leaves into the drain.

Whoops, lost his footing. Ended up splashing down.

"Duh...that big pile of water over there. Where else would I be going?"