Nick gives fair warning

This morning we went to UT Lab School to check out the boys' classrooms and meet some of their classmates. Nick's classroom was open first, and Max was excited about the opportunity to play on the toddler playground, which is usually not available for his age group. He had a blast playing on the structures that he can usually only watch from his "Big Kid" playground.

At one point Nick went to retrieve a ball that had rolled under a bench, and the next thing we knew, he was crawling underneath the fence that separated the two playgrounds. I could tell he was going to make it, and anything I could do to stop him might have resulted in scratches, pain or injury. So, I asked the undergrad assistant who was standing nearby to open the gate, and I went to intercept him on the other side. Before I could even get to him, he had gotten up and run over to the main play structure and started climbing. He was very proud of himself :)

I let his teacher know what had happened, and was assured by her, Max's teacher and the Director of the program that this had NEVER happened before (I wasn't upset about it at all, but they seemed to be a bit flabbergasted). The Director later explained that the current drought has caused the ground to shrink. Ordinarily the UT Grounds crew would restore the playgrounds' grassy areas to their usual levels, but with the extreme heat and lack of rain, the dirt would just fly away. I agreed that it wouldn't make any sense to waste water on replacing dirt, so I offered to just feed Nick as much as possible between now and Tuesday, when the modified start begins. She said that they would come up with a fix before then, so it would not be necessary to fatten him up with a Winnie the Pooh belly.