Jump in that mud puddle!

I'm not one of those people who is deathly afraid of dirt; I'm just lazy.  Too lazy, most days, to give an extra bath or pull out the stain pre-treater.  But I've done a 180 lately, even encouraging my little guy to dig in the dirt and splash in the mud puddles. And it turns out, we've both been having a blast...

We don't even own rain boots.  This is the kid whose feet grew two shoe sizes since 6 months ago.  But when we looked out the window and saw the pouring rain, something in me said, "go outside anyway."  He loves "umblellas" and splashing in water, so I thought, what the hey.  It's mid-September, but it's not too cold for water shoes...yet!

He ran up and down just a few squares of pavement with a puddle.

As we walked around the block, I noticed a couple of different condo balconies with toddlers looking down on us, safely out of the rain.

And here's a look at some messy fun on a sunnier day.  (The dirt doesn't show much in the photo, but after rolling around in some mulch at the park, his whole body was covered. All the way down to the diaper.)  There's a train buried under that pile of dirt!