Indoor Wonderland

Vince has a new trick.  First he gathers up his shoes, then he follows me around the house saying, "Ca-ca....ca-CA," this can go on for twenty minutes and it's a little hard to distract him once he gets going.  

As with most things, I blame my mostly innocent husband.  Matt had discovered this fantastic indoor kids park near our house.  When they're both a little stir crazy, or when I'm trying to write, they'll sometimes head out there.  They've been going about once a week and Vin just loves this place.  He adores it so much that to him there really is no other reason to go anywhere, pretty much ever.  

Because it's Matt's distraction for the boy, I hadn't been there yet.  Yesterday he started up with it again, "Tha-ew?  Sha..oo.  Shew.  Shoe."  He handed me his tennis shoes.  "Ca?  Ca.  Ca.  Ca.  Ca."

"Woman?  Car. Now. Seriously, come with me."  And who can resist someone so bossy?  I find it charming.  So, we loaded up into the ca' and headed out in search of someplace warm and squishy.

We got there and the place was packed.  I marveled at the herds of youngins diving about in fluid movement like a swarm of migrating sparrows - synchronized and sudden movement had them swooping down plastic slides and diving through the ball crawl only to emerge and whoosh up the rope ladder.  


Families congregated on benches and shared big platters of food.  I realized that because of this place I will never be a bad mother if I don't take him to Chucky Cheese!  We could come here and play and I could bring my tasty organic, snotty foods and avoid the soul sucking over marketing gloom of mass consumerism! (Until the next time I go to Target, but that's a different story.)

"Don't worry - the little kid section is calmer," Matt assured me, navigating the crowd like a pro.  (A pro that was molting.  I noticed a hole in his down jacket.  He fit with my migrating simile nicely.  He's so thoughtful.)

 

Sure enough, he headed into the little kid fray like a pro and promptly picked up one of these cushiony worm things and tried to take it up the slide with him. 

 

He tried to wait patiently for the ball crawl, but it was always full.  There were a bunch of kids in there that were definitely over the 3 age limit, but most of them were sweet and helped out the other little kids.  It was really remarkable.  

There was only one kid that seemed to be causing some trouble.  I could tell from his red rimmed eyes that he was just plain tuckered out.  So, I forgive him for shoving that one baby over and biting Vince so hard he broke the skin.  Vin handled the scuffle like a champ, too.  He just cried as the little lamprey latched on to his upper arm and was pretty quickly soothed after I used the jaws of life to pry him off of him.

Then he took off again.

"Can we get one?  MOM?  I wanna live in a plastic tree house!"
 

 

Concerning that they let some homeless guy in to watch the children.  Just kidding, this one's mine.  Clearly, it's laundry day at our house. Even dressed up goofy, I think he's devastatingly handsome.
 

Oh, and there we go, thumb and ear contact.  Somebody's done for the day.
 

"Ca?  Ca, Ca - Ca?"  Come on, Mom.  Let's go.