Park Day: Polliwog Park, Manhattan Beach

Love this park! Apparently Manhattan Beach's Polliwog Park is well-known for being awesome, so another mom told me it can get quite crowded, but when we were there it was just an ideal space for little boys to explore and climb around. It's huge, and there are three (yes, three) huge play structures, swings, barbecue and picnic stuff, a pond full of ducks, a concrete frog, a concrete boat, exercise equipment, a "disc golf" setup (?), the MB historical society building, a botanic garden with California native plants and tons of bird feeders and a waterfall, lots of ball fields of various flavors and somewhere in the back, a swimming pool. My impression is that it was originally (and remains to some degree) a "flood abatement zone" that got rehabbed (thus the pond, among other elements) but they did a great job and with the exception of an excess of duck and seagull poo near the pond, an awesome place to spend a couple of hours with a kid. Really great park with lots of very nice moms, and we'll definitely be back here.

Jackson enjoying the "upper playground."

View of the pond, amiphitheater and the two lower playgrounds (off to the left behind the trees).

At the lower playgrounds (which has two play structures), Jackson stands at the stern of in the concrete and likely unseaworthy USS Polliwog; behind that you can see a concrete frog (a frog is the symbol of the park), plus a mysterious "lighthouse" and weird cool mist thing that I suspect is a well-camouflaged part of the flood management system underlying the park.

Jackson reaches out to touch a California bumblebee that was enjoying the blooming poppies in the botanical garden on the edge of the park.

Jackson tests out the stepping stones at the botanical garden; just beyond the watering fountain in the background there's a sweet picnic area and a waterfall.

Los Angeles Events Calendars

If you're looking for interesting things to do with your kid in Los Angeles, get the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Annual Festivals Guide, which is available online as a PDF or can be picked up at certain official city offices. It lists cultural festivals, free concerts in the parks, street fairs and so forth. I found something on pretty much every page that I'd like to do.

Another good resource, and one of that's actually online and updated regularly, is ExperienceLA.com, which is a local events calendar cosponsored by the Community Redevelopment Agency of L.A., the L.A. County Arts Commission, Metro, the L.A. Convention and Visitors' Bureau, USC, the DWP and the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Monica. It's searchable, and it covers an even wider variety of activities than does the festivals guide.

Wh-Questions!! (Or should that be wh-questions?!)

Jackson has graduated to the wh-questions, which I've been waiting for with great anticipation. I feel like being able to formulate questions is a hugely important part of cognitive development and he's on his way.

This morning he asked me, "Where stepstool go?" He's generally at the three-word sentence phase right now, although sometimes he dips a pinkie-toe in four-word phrases. He can do four-syllable words too, which is pretty entertaining.

On a slightly related note, we were at the airport yesterday and I told him I would let him out of his stroller soon so he could wreak havoc, and he proceeded to holler "Wreak havoc! Wreak havoc! Wreak havoc!" over and over again at the top of his lungs. He's a good little mimic. Thankfully, there were other moms present who thought it was funny and made me feel better.

Bus 439 or Bust

What I learned today is that Metro's 439 bus line is a great way to get downtown, and despite the fact it only runs during commute hours, the uncrowded, unstressful door-to-door service to the big library is worth the wait. (The alternative route on public transportation is a subway and two buses, which is Too Much with a toddler. Meanwhile, driving and parking downtown during the week is just tiresome and/or unspeakably expensive.)

Doodlebug enjoying the fountain out front of the Central Library.

We were just at the main library to lay hands on some specific books, DVDs and audiobooks (I'm tired of waiting for holds to trickle in to our local branch), but we were lucky enough to stumble upon an unscheduled storytime about frogs and Jackson was invited to join the group.

The kid got to sleep through his first subway ride, but I had to wake him up to get him on the first of the two buses home. I compensated him for his interrupted sleep with some ice cream and he (predictably) thought that was a perfectly adequate deal. (This is the last stop on the Purple Line, Wilshire-Western, and this trip reminded me that they seriously need to push that thing to Santa Monica already!) 

Park Day: South Bay Botanic Garden

Today was the free day at the South Coast Botanic Garden, which once upon a time was a landfill and is now a very nice green space on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Here are some highlights:

Jackson's a giant! (Jackson at the three bears' house in the Children's Discovery Garden. Goldilocks is inside and there are three topiary bears just outside the frame of this shot.)

Flowering peach trees in bloom. You could hear these trees buzzing from several feet away because there were so many bees on the blossoms.

Jackson points out a western fence lizard in the wall.

Close-up of a "bluebelly."

Jackson gets into the spirit of the Garden of the Senses, reaching for a scented geranium.

Absolutely loved this garden of the senses, which is full of interesting plants to see, smell and touch, with lots of signs throughout, encouraging interacting with each plant and suggesting which to smell and touch.

Little guy explores a fountain and plot of lavender in the Mediterranean garden.

Little boy, stroller, sage, California poppies. Can you find the lizard?

Hi everybody!

Weekend Outing: El Dorado Nature Center, Long Beach

I'm determined to visit every place in L.A. with Nature in the title between now and May to take advantage of the spring-ness of spring.

Today we hit the El Dorado Nature Center, which features 2.25 miles of trails and a sweet old-timey nature center. This park is great for kids, because it's completely controlled nature. Lots of junk species like mallard ducks and squirrels and slider turtles, lots of flat paths that are great for strollers and toddlers, and very little wildness and/or danger.

Jackson managed the quarter-mile track by himself, and then I carried him most of the way around the one-mile self-guided nature trail and we learned about tree names like "alder" and "oak." ("Oak" made him bust out Okie-dokie-artichokie from LeapFrog Letter Factory, LOL.)

J loved the nature center, because there were owls in the gift shop and they had a great touch table of bones, antlers and horns, which is something that I haven't seen at other museums. This was a nice controlled hike in Long Beach's great El Dorado Regional Park and since it was just a dash (OK, a long dash) down the 405, we'll do it again. The only downside was that it costs $7 to get in to park, but I suppose that's often the case with many nature areas.

Unplanned Park Day: Vista Hermosa Natural Park, Downtown L.A.

We ended up at Vista Hermosa Natural Park quite by accident. We had some time to kill before the Echo Park Branch Library opened (they had some DVDs I wanted) and while looking for lunch, we found this amazing refuge in the city. As you can see from the picture above, this is right in the middle of downtown. That's US Bank Tower (the tallest building west of the Mississippi) in the background, and you can also see Disney Hall from the front gate.

In addition to a children's "adventure area," a random windmill and some of the best native plantings I've seen anywhere in the city, this little park has a waterfall, stream and pond. There were no creatures that I could see in the pond, but Jackson and I thought it was a pretty neat spot, just the same! The majority of the park is lawns, a jogging loop and some healthy and extremely well-maintained native flowers, trees and berry bushes.

I've trained my little naturalist well. This is him enjoying the fragrance of a trail-side sage plant. 

Stairs. Sunlight. Baby.