In the morning I made my good mommy effort and went to the school to buy popcorn for Vivian's after school snack. Every Friday, the PTA sells fresh popped popcorn during snack and lunch, but only 2nd graders and up can buy it, because the younger kids don't have free time. This is torture for Vivian, because the whole school smells like popcorn, but she can't have any. When she spontaneously confessed to me that she had picked some pop corn up off the ground and eaten it because she wanted it so bad, I figured it was time to intervene. She saw me when I was at school buying the popcorn, and I got lots of hugs and felt loved.
I came home and did some school work, and then went with friends back to ISB to walk through the grounds and out the back gate to a restaurant called Blue Sky Cafe. I had heard good things, and it definitely lived up to them. The set up and decor were lovely, and the food was delicious. I didn't get an exterior shot, so I'll try for one next time, since there will definitely be a next time in the near future.
I figured she would love the giant rubber wheel, and sure enough, she went right for it.
She ran back and forth in the that thing like a crazed hamster for a while, and then dove into the ball pool.
There was also a slide into another ball pool, so she bounced between the two ball pools and the rubber wheel for a while. Once she wore herself out, she could settle down and enjoy the role play area.
Some of the ice cream flavors were truly bizarre. Foe example, there was one called musky melon. What's a musky melon? The fruit and veggie stand cracked me up too, because they had the usual apples, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and then lots of mangoes. Yes, we definitely live in Thailand :-)
Every so often she would leave the role play area and zoom back over to the wheel or one of the ball pools, and then she'd run back and try something else. Towards the end she discovered a music section with color coded songs. The booklet was turned to Ode to Joy, so she sat down to play it, xylophone style.
She didn't want to leave, but after a couple hours, the mommies were ready to go. I promised her we could come back soon.
When we got home, we got about thirty minutes of enjoyable Elena company, before she turned into a baby tyrant. She has mastered crawling and pulling herself up onto things, and so she has no interest in her play area, even though it's big and full of toys. She's figured out several ingenious ways to escape, most of which involve pushing the big gray, plastic fence that encloses her play area on three sides. She's really strong! Once she gets free, it's only a matter of time before she encounters an area she's not allowed into (the entry way with the shoes) or tries to pull something down on herself (a big package of printer paper). I chased her around and let her explore for a while, but I was already so tired from Kidzoona, that I didn't have much mommy energy left. When I put her in her four sided, inescapable playpen, she screamed REALLY loudly for a REALLY long time. I changed her diaper and fed her, but all she wanted was to roam free, and that was not an option. I finally had to put her to bed, where she screamed for a while, got fed again, and finally accepted defeat.
I'll leave you with a picture of a happier Elena though. This is her trying to drive the golf cart. She's ready to explore everything!
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