With Amanda here and all, I've come to the conclusion after today that I very much like having a co-housewife. It's a really wonderful thing to have someone who can keep an eye on Gavin so that I can pee without having to leave the door open so that I can peek out at my exersaucing Bear in the living room. He's liking having his moms out of his sight less and less these days.
Our big adventure today was to go to the Ferndale Community Center's Kid Zone. At least I think it's called Kid Zone. Something like that, anyway. Amanda, Gavin and I spent about an hour or so in a gigantic playroom filled with other romping kids and a million toys (the toy selection was very heavy on dinosaurs and trucks). Gavin was, I think, the youngest kid there. Not the smallest, mind you. There were several kids walking around who were barely his size. He's not yet at a "plays with other" stage in his recreational development. He was perfectly content to sit between Amanda and I on one of the very colorful rugs and play with toys brand new to him. And by "play with" I largely mean put them in his mouth. I think he liked that other kids were there, though. At least, he would occasionally regard a fellow child with a cool, gap mouthed stare or look toward the direction of particularly raucous behavior. One girl, who was considerably older than Gavin, yelled, "Ahhh dinosaur!" and threw a solid rubber Triceratops at us. It was heavy, too. I did not witness the throwing, Amanda did, I saw only the toy landing on the rug next to me. I'm very happy she didn't hit Gavin. This same girl was later stalking through the room with an armful of plastic bowling pins in primary colors screaming, "I have these! I have these!" When she shouted this into the face of boy younger than her who I am guessing was her brother, he said, "Okay." As the saying goes, "One little girl's plastic bowling pins are another kid's who-gives-a-shits."
One little boy with very ruddy cheeks kept trying to give Gavin toys. He toddled over with a basketball for Gavin and dropped it on Gavin's head. His dad was very embarrassed. "He's just trying to share," he said (the dad, not the kid. The kid never said anything either due to shyness or ability). He also said the boy was, I think, 15 months old. Maybe 18. The boy later came back with a blue ball made of blow-molded plastic. Gavin didn't even look up, so the boy gave it to me, instead. He then took the mallet from the alligator xylophone next to Gavin and put it in his mouth. Soon after I went to retrieve a Kleenex from my coat and when I returned Amanda said that Gavin, too, had put the mallet in his mouth. And it wasn't long before another child, a girl who had a strawberry on her face rather than, like Gavin, on his head came over and repeated the mallet in the mouth trick. There's a big blue bin in the room that says "Put used/dirty toys here" so I made sure that the xylophone made its way in. I don't know what they do with the toys in that box. I'm assuming they clean them. Or maybe they set them on fire. I mean, kids are gross. Why take a chance? I'm definitely bringing an entire container of germ wipes on our next visit.
The grownups there mostly kept to themselves, except for one woman who wouldn't stop talking to me. She introduced herself and her daughter but I can't remember either of their names. She was, as Amanda said, "An over-sharer." She also asked me many personal questions that I chose to give very vague answers to. I mentioned something about my wife which prompted her to ask, "So whose baby is he?" to which I replied, "Both of ours. He's my son. He's her son." When she asked who carried him I relented and told her that my wife did. She then asked if I ever planned on carrying a baby myself, a question I thought was a little too forward for someone I've just met and have already concluded is not all there (of course, the later explains the former). I told her I didn't know. That Gavin was only 8 months, after all, so we were kind of concentrating on him. She also asked how his delivery was. "Well, he's alive and she's alive," I said. "So I'd say it went pretty well." She's laid off, I'm laid off. I have a feeling I'll be seeing her there a lot.
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