Park, Ear and Babysitters

We had a good day at the park on Friday early evening.  Christian would live in the park if he could :)  We are doing a park study, if you will, of the ones in our area.  I try to find a different park, we play and I evaluate if it's a return park.  Here's our list so far:
Park #1 - Positives = closest to our house, great age appropriate playset, sturdy bucket seat swing, great path around park for me to walk, rubber type of ground material, pond with ducks to feed. Negatives = strange people there, crowded, big kids don't stay on their playset but run on the smaller kids set and knock them down.
Park #2 - Positives = on the way home from daycare, not too crowded, bucket seat swings in good shape, rubber ground material.  Negatives = have to wind through neighborhood to back track to get to it, playset is small, older kids use bad language loudly, grass isn't kept mowed.
Park #3 - Positives = on the walking path. Negatives = big kids pee on the slides, tiny rocks for ground material, playset is small and for older kids, have to trek across ballfields to get to it.
Park #4 (Friday's discovery) - Positives = lots of levels on playset, alot of bucket seat swings (other parks have only 2), not crowded, ducks to feed.  Negatives = buckets seats on swing are cracked so not very safe,  tiny rocks for ground material.

So far I have completely ruled out Park #3.  I have a couple more I have found we will be testing out too :)  I'm having a good time doing this, it's like a scavanger hunt for me and new adventure for Christian every time! Another big adventure we had, that was not as pleasant, was to Urgent Care Saturday afternoon.

He had a few reddish crusties in his ear that I wiped out with a Qtip.  After naptime, his ear was almost completely closed with the reddish crusty stuff, so off to Urgent Care.  Result is an ear infection with a possible eardrum puncture.  Not sure how that happened but the poor little guy was in pain.  The ear drops we got either must work awfully fast or have some numbing agent in them because after the first dose of 4 drops, an hour or so later and he was his normal happy self.  Poor little guy, that left ear keeps giving us problems.

We did a test run babysitter, with me leaving, and it went great!  I know, I know, it doesn't mean it will go great next time, but at least we're moving in the right direction.  So I'm going to the Cardinals baseball game Friday night and the new babysitter will be with him.  The good news is that it's a night game, so she'll only have to "watch" him for a couple of hours until he goes to bed. I think that's good, to ease them both into this and getting to know each other.  YAY, Momma gets a night out!!!!!
~Amy