It sure beats blowing up the kiddie pool

Lately I've been considering building G.I.R.L. a sand box, mostly because she enjoys climbing into our fire pit, and a sand box seems cleaner somehow. Here she is with her new elephant watering can, just chilling in the fire pit, as one does:

Then I thought, maybe she'd just get really dirty and track sand into my already filthy house and I'd have to actually bathe her. I should start small, maybe with a sand table. Then I remembered we live in an oppressively hot state, and jumped from sand table to water table. Yes! A water table would be perfect for the summer. So before I could change my mind I went out and bought a kitchen sink from the ReStore store. I next purchased a bunch of pipes and pipe fittings to build a frame for the sink to rest on at just the right height for an almost-three-year-old. There was much cutting, and measuring, and re-cutting, and a follow-up trip to the hardware store, but it's largely done. Here it is being tested out this morning:

I'm very pleased with how it turned out, but I have to admit to over-engineering it a bit. I got it into my head that it would be neat for the water to drain out the back, which meant fully plumbing the sink. So I installed two sink drains, which connect underneath,

and feed into a drain pipe,

 which runs off the porch and into the yard.

(What I probably should have done was just install the two drains and put buckets underneath to catch the water when I pulled the plugs.)

I actually took a video of this draining, in case, you know, someone out there has never seen water come out of a pipe before, but I'll spare you from having to watch such a fascinating clip. Instead, here's G.I.R.L. with a sponge:

Fishing around in the deep:

And here she is with a puppet she found on the porch (abandoned by one of my day campers), which she greatly enjoyed dunking in the water until it fell apart:

Three things of note: 

1. The frame is made out of pvc pipe, which I cemented together, except for the very bottom portion of the legs. This way I can pull them off and replace them with slightly longer legs as G.I.R.L. gets taller, which, the doctors assure me, will probably happen.

2. Because this water table is on a porch/deck as opposed to a patio, G.I.R.L. slipped and fell down a lot. I'll be purchasing a rubber doormat in the near future.

3. There are four holes at the top of the sink, where a faucet would normally be installed. I have some vague plans to put some pipes there so that fun doo-dads, like water wheels and funnels, can be attached to them.