A most surreal afternoon walk with Little Red

What a beautiful spring Wellington morning it was today.... until mother nature packed a sad and sent the rain in. But then it was sunny again. Kind of. Looks like good ol' Welly is taking a leaf out of the Auckland weather book, eh? 

Anywho, completely muffing up my schedule (i.e. canceling a Plunket course and forfeiting coffee group for a journey up the way that turned out not to be today after all - that's baby brain for you, I guess), the wee pickle and I were at a loss for activities. About to set out on a delicious, sun filled meander down to Island Bay, we quickly halted our plans when the rain set in. What better to do than snuggle in bed on a rainy day? So we did just that. However, both of us suffer from incredibly short attention spans so as soon as the pitter patter of raindrops ceased, Little Red was in his buggy and we were out the door before you could say "walkies!"

Thankfully, the weather held out for most of our journey down to the beach. I was very much enjoying using the Mountain Buggy carrycot that a friend so kindly lent to us - for once it was lovely to watch Redford rocking around and drifting off to sleep. 

On the way back home the sun began to get unbearably hot, yet I could see storm clouds chasing us from the south and all of a sudden it began raining from the warm, sunny skies. It was so surreal, I haven't seen a sun shower in yonks and TV on the Radio was blaring away on my iPod which is always going to crazy things up a bit. The feeling was incredible - the ice cold raindrops pattering onto my hot cheeks and the smell was heavenly - you know that smell when rain hits warm asphalt and freshly cut grass? Yum! The only problem was, while I was thoroughly enjoying myself, I had no rain cover for Little Red.... oops. 

I pulled the hood up but the raindrops were still sneaking in and kissing bubs lightly on his cheeks, forehead, mouth and eyelids. The look on his face was one of pure shock, quite similar to the first time we put him in the bath and he looked at us like we'd just committed some unspeakable crime. Just as I was thinking oh heck, I'm about to have a screeching baby on my hands and scrabbling for my cardigan to put over the gap to fend of the incoming drops, he licked the rainwater off his lips, smacked them around a bit and then began to laugh! And this wasn't some sissy boy baby giggle, this was a full blown, over excited, guffawing laugh. I stopped and stared at him, thinking perhaps it was just a fluke but no, as I pushed the hood of the carrycot back and gave the rain more room to work with Little Red began to laugh more and more with every drop. It was incredible. In fact, by the time we got home I hurried him quickly inside for fear he would start hyperventilating from all the chuckling!

So, it turns out my little man loves the rain. What a surreal experience. Never in his life so far have I seen him so happy, it was the most glorious thing.