Tomato Drive Thru

A little more than a year ago I would have easily been able to say that there was absolutely nothing made of plastic in my backyard.  I can no longer make that statement.  Plastic things seem to be popping up in my yard a lot lately like mushrooms.

Most evenings after we all get home from work and daycare, we have dinner and then we go outside to play for an hour or two before dark.  Sometimes we go for walks, but lately because of all the plastic fun that is sprouting up in the backyard, we have great reasons to stay close to home. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affection for cars.  This trait seems to be rubbing off onto Ben.  Fortunately Ben's cars are much cheaper than the ones that I like...   Ben starts the evening by going out to inspect his fleet of cars.  He checks the trunks to make sure we didn't leave the phone in there again.... in the rain...    Then he makes his choice for his first ride and off we go.  (or on this evening he got Grandma to push him!)  Go Speed Racer GO!

We usually drive around the yard for a bit, but its inevitable that as soon as we pass by the tomato plants, Ben's going to want to stop for a tasty red tomato treat.  To an innocent stander-by, he simply just points and grunts at the plants, but to those in the know, he's ordering the #1 tomato combo with a side of tomatoes and a tomato slushy to go.  Oh, and hold the skins.

Grape tomatoes are his favorite and he won't take a bite out of anything any bigger, like a plum tomato.  He'll gnaw on it a bit, but then hand it back to me as if he's saying "this won't do.." and then point again at the grape tomato vine.  He will eat the cherry tomatoes, but we need to bite them in half to make them a little smaller - oh, and then he will also need to spit out the skins.  I'm still really not sure how he does that, but we have lots of cherry tomato skins littering the ground around the garden to prove it.   Most times he'll take the skin out of his mouth and hand it to me for disposal. 

The problem now is that he's pretty much eaten every ripe grape and cherry tomato in the garden.  There's a few green ones left, but its going to be a week or so before they're ripe.  So now we've been reduced to having to steal tomatoes from our neighbor's garden.  We started "Operation Tomato" when the neighbors  were away on vacation... heck, they were just going to rot, you know?  But then we got caught last week after they got home.  I think it was the tomato seeds all over Ben's face and shirt that gave him away.  Fortunately his cute little face got us the approval to eat as many tomatoes as we wanted.  Whew...

So then after a few tomatoes and a few laps around the yard, its time to change cars. 

Next up is the electric car he got for his birthday.

(Note the additional plastic growing in the backyard.)  

Ben's gotten pretty good at driving around this electric Kawasaki.  He now keeps his finger on the throttle, but we still have to help him steer.  Ben doesn't quite understand why the bush or fence does't just jump out of his way like Mommy & Daddy do.   Even so, he's very proud of his driving abilities.

What a good looking kid!

A few more laps and it's time to change cars again.

Ben loves pointing lately... he points at pretty much everything that interests him - in this case, Lybbie was standing by the door waiting to go in the house.  He needs to remind us of things like this...

Next up! Let's play on the new Clubhouse Climber!   Since this is a new plastic growth in the yard, he is still learning to play with it.  So we started out by climbing in the tunnel underneath.  Ben caught on pretty quickly.

Whew... by this time of the evening we're all stuffed with tomatoes and feeling pretty tired. 

Its time to get ready for bed!