On the bus, up a tree

I've been trying to do fun things with Corbin most days. He's being an outstanding big brother--mostly gentle, mostly patient. Still, we don't want him to feel pushed aside. Usually it's storytime, gymnastics, Friday concerts in the park, a trip to the library. Last weekend we headed out on a rather different adventure. Across town at Elizabeth Park, the International Society of Arboriculture was hosting a regional Tree Climbing Championship. Sounds like fun, right? Right! Might as well check it out.

We skipped out on the bike and chariot, or main mode of transportation, and decided to take the bus. Which, of course, made the highlight of the trip the ride, not the destination. Corbin has been on a bus before. He rode one to Whistler for the Olympics. He rode the city bus once last year. But now he is two, and sees buses everywhere, and loves them. He was very, very excited to be taking a ride.

We caught the bus from just down our street. We had to take it into downtown to transfer to get to the park. Corbin loved looking out the window. He loved the big steps and sitting up high. At the downtown station there were more buses than he knew what to do with, and he wanted to get on most of them.

We pulled the stop-request cord for the park stop. It took about twenty minutes to get there. The tree climbing competition was interesting. A few people were watching, but I think most of them were family of climbers. They had to participate in a bunch of different disciplines. We watched a bit, and then played on the playground.


The bus that goes by our house only runs once per hour, so when we headed back, we had a little time downtown. First we walked to the Bagelry and had a whole wheat with a shmear. Then we walked to Great Harvest Bread Co. and got free samples of delicious blueberry sweet bread. We ate them on the bench at the station, and the birds ate all of Corbin's crumbs.

Trips like these remind us how big Corbin is getting. He'll listen to what we say, think about it and respond, point new and different things out, hold hands on the sidewalk. He seemed like a big kid on his big bus trip. He's growing up.

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Coming up next week: Tent attempt #2. I made reservations for our camping trip, so this had better work...