Park Day: Fox Hills Park, Culver City

Dolphin rider: Jackson enjoyed this concrete cetacean at the otherwise fairly straightforward playground.

Unlike some parks (ahem, Blair Hills), this playground actually had other kids to play with. Jackson liked meeting two-year-olds Kingston and Lyanna. Lyanna's grandmother later shared a tiny Russian-bagel snack with Jackson.

My tennis ball! Mine! (Jackson sweet-talked a couple of very nice tennis players into giving him one of their tennis balls.) 

Kiddo loves a good informational plaque.

Fox Hills Park is fairly close to us, but it seems to be mostly a sports park rather than a kids park. (Huge fields, plus a running/workout loop, as well as volleyball, tennis and basketball courts.) There's no parking lot*, and it's hard to see the park from the street, but once you get up there, it's a nice place with a lot of friendly neighborhood people around. Well, mostly friendly...

After we wandered across the field, played with the kids and explored the tennis courts, Jackson walked down the maintenance road and stepped onto the jogging path that loops around the park. I am hard-core about staying to the far right of any jogging or bike path like this, whenever we do enter one, because I know we are a slow-moving caravan and that toddlers should generally be kept far away from fast-moving, focused runners and bicycists. Just the same, we'd been on the public walking path for five seconds and we weren't bothering anyone when:

Skinny busybody: "Are you are aware we have a lovely children's play area?"
Me, gritting teeth, smiling, playing dumb like I didn't know what she meant: "Yes, we were just there."
Skinny busybody: "OK, well, this is not a good place for children!"
Skinny busybody grumbles to herself and continues her power walk.
Jackson waves vigorously at her and shouts in her direction: "Buh-bye grandma!"

Heh.

* I actually got my first Park Day Parking Ticket today. I looked for signs, but there weren't any in view, so I'm going to contest the ticket. It's not like I have much better to do, and who knows, it might actually work!