"Helping Day"

Today was the NYC Parks Dept. annual "It's My Park Day", when you're encouraged to lend a hand making your local neighborhood parks into even better places to play and enjoy. We headed just down the street to Coffey Park, where John the Groundskeeper happily put us all to work gathering up large sticks/debris and the occasional candy wrapper or bottle cap. The boys took turns using the "grabber", and were mostly very interested in helping out. We wanted to introduce the ideas of volunteering and civic responsibility, but the concepts are a little broad, so I told them it was "Helping Day" at the park, and when we were finished, we thanked John for letting us help him. It was a quietly awesome parenting moment.

Here we see Aidan working diligently, trying to coordinate trash grabber and trash bag. Aidan clearly longs to be productive in a way that I've just never seen before...he is always a busy bee. Jack throws some big sticks into the bag, then wonders whether he can change his mind and get them back. He also does some impromptu water fountain inspection...