Auntie and MsI were heading to what they call the Sand Playground, but MsE knew she couldn't go along, because we're only allowed out in groups of 2.

She asked if we could go to a different park, so we did. We grabbed our water bottles and a ride to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. MsC stayed home with Dad who was working; I imagine MsC took the time to catch up on her TV shows - the other girls often won't let her choose the program, because MsC's shows are just a bit too old for the rest of them, and MsI is quite vocal about what she does not like.

Just before heading out I checked to make sure the park was actually open. It's hard to predict what's closed due to Covid at the moment. It was open, but it said that reduced capacity meant to expect an hour or two wait to get in.

I was not prepared to wait that long, but the Children's Garden is attached to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, so I figured at worst we would just wander around the gardens. MsE wouldn't have been impressed, because she wanted to find a playground and the rest of the gardens doesn't have one to my knowledge. Luckily, being a weekday, there were very few people there and we walked right in and only came across someone occasionally as we wandered around.

The guard gave MsE a paper map and she ran with that challenge. She figured out where she wanted to go and which way to head at all the forks in the path. She used the map for all of our directions. MsC's first destination of choice was the Tree House, but we climbed over or walked through any thing that looked interesting on our way there.

MsE got me up into the Tree House and then told me to follow her down the slide. I was faster than it looked and it almost spat me out into the sand at the bottom.

We found our fair share of wildlife in the park. MsE spotted the birds and I spotted the water monitor lizards. We saw a White-Breasted Waterhen. It reminded us of a chicken, scratching though the leaves. When we startled it, it ran off, instead of flying away. Later we did find real chickens by following a Rooster's call. We watched the hen and her 3 half-grown chicks in the under brush. MsE was disappointed that she didn't catch a picture when the 4 of them ran across the path; She was holding the camera at the time.

MsE also found a turtle in the pond. We found butterflies in all kids of colours near the pond. They were lilac purple, deep red, bright yellow, patterns of browns, or a mix of multi-colours.

From the Tree House we could see a waterfall, so we set off to find it. MsE was thrilled to discover it in a little cavern. Shortly after we crossed the bouncy suspension bridge.

On our way to Tree Fort Number 2, we got into some raise tree top path and we marvelled over a tree's giant seeds. I don't think they're coconuts. It wasn't a palm tree. But what do I really know about coconuts. They were of a similar size.

The 2nd tree fort is my favorite. It's got stairs and bridges and a net area, which happened to really challenge MsE because of the ants. Honestly, they're every where in Singapore - Everywhere.

I helped MsE climb down the netting by holding onto one of my hands, so that she would only have to put one hand on the netting where ants could possibly be. But then we arrived at a ladder the led out of the Fort. There wasn't any other easy out. She would have had to climb the ant infested netting again, but the the hole down clearly had ants surrounding it. I went down first in order to catch her if she fell. I was half expecting her to panic and let go of everything. After hemming and hawing for a bit, in the end MsE decided to do it all really fast: spin around, grab the handles and move down the rope ladder.

She didn't even have me check her for ants at the bottom. She'd already requested, and received about 3 ant checks. This is where we rub down her legs and arms and give her a look over to convince her there are no ants on her. Often there are but they're so tiny, you just feel a slight tickle as they move over you - unless they're the red ones with the painful bite.

When we were almost home, MsE said, "You know? Maybe I'm not afraid of ants anymore?" Then we talked about how you can be afraid of something and still find the courage to do it.