So I pretty much measure how much a person loves me and/or my son by how often they comment on the photos I post of him on Facebook. Is that wrong? We're rapidly approaching the 800 photo mark. After all, the measure of how much I love my son is the number of photos I've posted on Facebook. I'm pretty sure that once I have 1,000 Facebook will honor me as Mother of the Year. Either that or shut down my account.
It rained all last night and all day long today. The good news? I left the windows in the van down. Not all the way down, mind you, but the middle set of windows were down about two inches each. Plenty of space to completely soak the carpet between the sliding door and the chair upon which Gavin's carseat is installed. This is exactly where I kneel to strap Gavin into his vehicular safety seating mechanism. So today's big outting began with the knees of my jeans all wet and a baby in a half soaked carseat.
But we had places to go and weren't about to let a little rain stop us. We were off to play at the Ferndale Community Center because, as Stacy had suggested last night, finding some indoor play time for Gavin would be a good idea for today. Because 1. Rain and 2. Our house is boring. Mind you, it isn't really that bad, and Gavin has a whole slew of new toys given to us by Big Gavin, a friend's four-year-old son. But our house is small and Gavin is on the go these days, a real crawling machine. And we both get a little stir crazy cooped up here all day.
Gavin was pretty pissed when I was getting him ready to leave and when I was strapping him into the car, but once I unleashed him in the gym for Romp and Stomp he was super happy. Romp and Stomp is basically a padded free-for-all for kids age 9 months and up (the oldest girl there was four. I don't know what the cut off age is). Mind you, the gym floor isn't padded and neither are the walls, but they've got gym mats and big soft 3-D shapes made out of gym mat material for the kids to climb on as well as a Moonwalk-type bounce house (mind you, it's not the huge ones you see at a state fair or anything. They also don't sell elephant ears at Romp and Stomp), some soccer and playground and basketballs, and foam floor hockey equipment. When we first got there about a half dozen kids were playing, but they and their parents went next door to the Kids Zone shortly after we arrived leaving Gavin and I with one other little girl and her parents. Gavin and the girl were introduced and Gavin kept reaching toward her face and eventually poked her in the eye. She did not like this and started to cry. For the rest of the hour or so Gavin and I were there, the girl would cry if Gavin started heading her way.
I don't know what it is about faces, but he is always trying to poke his fingers in my mouth and eyes and grabbing at my face in general. The other day we were playing Monster Baby (this is the same game that got my throat stomped. I am a slow learner) and while I was on my back on the floor looking momentarily away from the looming face of my son he clamped down on my nose with his entire mouth and bit down. He is, as Stacy and I are fond of saying, an Earth Scientist, very curious about everything. But we need to nip this little habit in the bud before he pulls a Mike Tyson on some poor kid. Truly, though, I don't think we have a biting problem on our hands so much as a kid with chompers who likes to chomp. He scratches the hell out of people and things with his fingernails, too, because he loves to scratch his nails against things to feel different textures and to hear how it sounds.
Other kids started to filter in and soon the gym was hoppin'. Gavin gravitated toward one of the foam hockey sticks. The father of the crying girl gently kicked a ball toward Gavin who promptly bunted the ball back to the guy using the hockey stick like he totally knew what a hockey stick was for and what was being asked of him. So the guy tapped the ball toward Gavin again. Same thing. And again. Gavin actually shifted the stick from one hand to the other to get a better whack at it. By this time I was genuinely impressed and terrified at Gavin's seemingly innate talent for hockey (it's not a sport I particularly like, but I say terrified because it's a sport with very expensive equipment to boot). Crying Girl's dad sat down across from Gavin with a foam hockey stick of his own and two two hit the ball back and forth a few times before Gavin lost interest and started crawling toward the girl who was in the bounce house. Evidently Gavin missed the sound of her crying because that's exactly what she started to do as soon as he reached her. Thankfully I was able to intervene to prevent another attempted face prodding and also stopped Gavin from using the girl's clothing as prop to use to pull himself up. I hope that Gavin's methods for approaching girls gets considerably better as he gets older. You know, by the time he's, like, 30.
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