Stewart Park

Our days are usually crammed with therapy. Ollie has occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy three times a week each, and Special Instruction twice a week. It is extremely rare for Ollie to have a weekday morning without a therapy session or appointment of some sort. So when such a day occurs, and especially when it coincides with beautiful weather, it is nice to be able to take advantage of it. On this particular day we decided to go to Stewart Park to explore and feed the ducks. Well, instead of ducks we found lots of Canada geese, and they were not shy! It was a little scary really, and I actually got nipped on my hand protecting Oliver's yummy fingers and toes from hungry goslings. Next time we'll try to avoid the geese and look a little harder for the ducks!

Stewart park is a beautiful park on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. I have a lot of fond memories of it from my previous life: swing dances in the pavilion, long runs with my Wednesday evening running group, picnics with friends, and lazy days at the annual Ithaca Festival. Those days are long gone, and the park looks different to me now. It looks more challenging.

The park was buzzing with kids Oliver's age running, laughing, and playing while their moms socialized and picnicked. I did my best to stay on task and concentrate on making it a fun outing for Oliver. I wanted to enable him to experience an assortment of activities at the park to the best of our abilities. He was skeptical about much of it, especially going down the slide and getting wet in the sprinklers. Of course there was nothing that was handicap accessible! Not even a single swing. So I held him on my lap and he enjoyed swinging that way for a while. Later on he indicated he wanted to go on the toddler swings that he saw the other children on. These had no back or head support, so I had to hold him steady which didn't make for good swinging action (and nearly threw my back out), but at least he got to do it. He also rode a little pony merry-go-round, and even the T-Rex. These were hard for him because he is unable to use his arms to hold on, and his legs cannot open that wide. He also thrusts backwards, which makes holding him steady even more difficult. But we did our best. Hopefully one day we can be there while the Carousel is running. I wonder if Ollie would find a real merry-go-round fun or frightening.

While we didn't have the relaxed carefree morning at Stewart park that the others were enjoying, we had a good time in our own way. And we made it home in time for Ollie's nap so he'd be rested and ready to go for his afternoon therapy!