won't you be my neighbor?

when i got home from work yesterday, i discovered that ted and cadence were at the playground around the corner from us, so i grabbed my camera to join them. as i was walking around to the playground entrance, a bunch of kids saw me with my big-ass camera strapped around my neck, and they started begging, 'take a picture of me! take a picture of me!' so i obliged.

each time i snapped a shot, they would crowd around my camera yelling, 'let me see! let me see!' they were so cute...

we live in a somewhat sketchy part of town. some portions of rogers park, our neighborhood, have seen a lot of development recently. the part of rogers park where we're at, however, it's a little more isolated from the cool and the hip, and it's just kinda boring.

there are definitely a lot of low income families around here, and i often see little kids playing unsupervised in the playground. most of them are really sweet and seem to really enjoy getting a little attention from a grownup every now and then.

they even let cadence take their ball away...and she gets very possessive of any ball within a 50ft radius, whether it belongs to her or not, so the actual owner of the ball most likely won't get it back until we leave the playground.

besides stealing other kids' balls at our local playground, cadence also enjoys going for a joyride on ted's relatively new Volpe. we need to get her a helmet for a longer ride, and we're hoping that she'll enjoy riding so much that when she gets older maybe she and her old man can get tandem bikes and do some cross country cycling. it's a dream of ted's.