It has been getting rather chilly in the mornings and in the evenings around here. I have been trying to ignore it, and on the sunny days that is fairly easy to do because by about eleven in the morning it is usually warm enough for a short sleeved shirt. Today, calling in a heating oil delivery was on my to – do list so for a brief period of time I had to acknowledge that these sunny, warm days are soon going to give way to the damp chill of late fall and the bitter cold and snow of winter.
As I waited on hold to speak with someone about scheduling the oil delivery, I watched Dylan as he played in his sand box. Today, the sand box was more of a puddle and mud pit combination than a sand box, and Dylan was loving it. He moved his bulldozer around under the water and scooped wet sand into his dump truck. He then moved the dump truck over to a bowl and enthusiastically lifted the back of the truck to dump the wet sand into the bowl. He did this over and over, and as I watched him, he told me that there was a lot of work to do and it could take a long time.
I told him to take as much time as he needed, because I know that all too soon the sand in the sand box will be hard and frozen and eventually covered with snow. Dylan overheard my telephone conversation and when I had finished it, he asked, “Why oil?” I told him that in a few weeks it would probably be time to turn on the heat in the house because it would be cold outside.
Dylan asked me whether he could still play outside when it was cold, and I reassured him that he could. As I said that, I made a mental note that it is time to stock up on ideas and materials for indoor play. I am sure that Dylan will still want to go outside sometimes, but I would like to make sure that there is always plenty to do indoors. In the next couple of posts, I will explore some ideas for indoor toddler fun so that we can all be prepared for spending more time indoors.