Helpful Background Info: Little Dude would not be interested in hanging out in a pack'n'play type of playpen for more than a few minutes ... I mean seconds ... and I can't say I blame him. On the other hand, we {the parents} are not interested in fencing in our yard. So ... the question was ... how can we let LittleDUDEWhoRarelyTakesADecentNap play safely outside while Halo or Buddy is watching him for a little while??? Initially, this spring, when Halo was helping she would quickly just buckle him somewhere ... the stroller, the swing, the carseat. LittleDUDEWhoRarelyTakesADecentNap wasn't so keen on all of this buckling ... obviously!
Enter giant playpen. Once again, this post title is deceiving ... because it is not a little playpen. It is a giant playpen ~ or could perhaps be called a play-yard?
How, you ask, does one accomplish this most wonderful thing??? {Notice I did not say beautiful.} Well ... first you need three {or four} trees that are fairly close together. Thankfully we still had all three of these pine trees. My husband and I had talked about him sneaking out under the cover of darkness {so as not to alert our neighbors who might get sad or mad} and fell one of these three trees of ours ... since they're a bit too close together. Plus, we could enlarge our space for frisbee tossing and other fun in the backyard.
Anyway, yes, you need at least three trees ... it wouldn't work very swell with only two. Then, you go scout in the basement for that big green roll of snow fence or silt fence or whatever it is that you almost pitched a few times ... but kept hanging onto it because "it might come in handy" ... for such a time as this! Next, you tightly wrap those trees with the fence and secure the two ends together with a long pole and maybe some other doo-dads. The ends can be opened to function as a gate ... but we found that it's faster for all of us just to jump the fence. Finally, if one enjoys the shrub clippers ~ and I do ~ one can just start randomly trimming the trees to enlarge the inside play area and also to relieve stress ;) Oh la la!
And the best part??? All four kiddos think it's neat :) You know ... there's something novel about smaller spaces. It's not foolproof ... LittleDUDEWhoRarelyTakesADecentNap has gotten out ... but it does slow him down some, keep him fairly contained for a short period, and prevents us from losing him to the long grasses growing in our yonder meadow. He has only tried to escape when everyone has jumped the fence and left him momentarily by himself. If someone is playing in there with him ... he's happy as a clam ... until he needs his Mama, of course :)
Oh ... and much of the time there is built-in shade to boot!
2 comments:
That's a pretty neat playpen and so clever! I can see why everyone wants to be in it!
That is an awesome baby jail. Good thinking. I think we have some snow fence in our basement too. It's funny what you keep just in case.
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