Water

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Similarly, you can take Joseph to a swimming pool but you can't persuade him that swimming is, in any way shape or form - fun.
You can't even lay him down in the bath, he just screams. You can sit him up and he will just about tolerate water being poured on his head to wash his hair, but that's about it. Baths are tolerable, but anything else is not. Andy even suggested we get him a paddling pool, but I pointed out that this would be a total waste of money as he doesn't like cold water.
You can imagine my surprise yesterday, when he proved me wrong. We have been tidying up our garden in an effort to get our house ready to sell. It seems to be one of those things where everything we do to the house seems to prompt even more things needing doing and it's all taking forever and if we sell this place before Joseph is 10 I'll be jolly surprised.
Still, the garden isn't looking half bad. We've done some weeding, got rid of pretty much all of the rubbish and moved my climbing rose so I can tie to to the trellis so it looks less stupid.
By the way, if anyone wants a hutch, please come and take ours. All it has in it now is some soil and the ghosts of about five Chinese painted quail. With a little cleaning out it would be good for guinea pigs or even a small rabbit. You'd be doing us a favour, taking it off our hands.
I've even put more stinky crystals on the lawn to keep the cat off. They seem to be working for the moment.
What with the recent rain, we haven't needed to top up our little water feature. It's basically a rock with a hole we drilled through it connected to a small fountain. It bubbles and looks pretty and we haven't turned it on in a while. I was surprised it was working, and even more so that the water hadn't gone black and slimy. I guess that will be all the fresh rain water.
Joseph liked the fountain. Joseph was very interested in the fountain. Joseph tried to play in the water and poke stones down the hole. Thankfully, it's slate pieces and they're all too big, but it didn't stop him trying.
Joseph ended up sat down next to the water feature, playing in the water. Now, yesterday was a sunny day but it wasn't exactly warm. The water coming up out of the water feature had a "cool mountain spring" edge to it - it was really very cold. Yet still he played in the water and it soaked up round his ankles and up his legs, his top got wet and it seeped into his nappy. Only the insides of his little welly boots were dry.
Andy tried to bring him in at about 5.30pm but he didn't want to come. I said to leave him for a bit more, after all, dinner wasn't until six. In the end he came in not long later as Andy decided the little fellow needed a bath before dinner time, what with him being soaking wet with cold water and covered in dirt. While Andy ran the bath, I stripped Joseph off on the back step and then let him run around in the living room with a towel wrapped round him. He didn't want to keep it there.
After playing in warm water for a bit he ate his dinner, a little reluctantly, left us a huge stinky offering in his nappy and went to bed.