Nov
2
Riley seems to be going through a lengthy stage of being fearful of new things and objecting to certain noises, so I was a little worried Halloween was going to deteriorate into a toddler-fueled freakout. Sure enough, one of the first things that happened when we showed up at JB’s work to participate in the office trick-or-treating involved a movement-triggered robot that leaped into blinking, rolling action when Riley approached the bucket of candy positioned nearby, and Riley became deeply paranoid that evil robots were lurking next to every candy handout, and he nervously asked “There no robot here?” over and over until I was ready to hunt down the tech worker who had set up the motion detector toy and cram a few robotic parts right up his fun-sized Hershey highway, if you know what I mean.
Things improved once we left JB’s office, though, and Trauma Robot was forgotten in the festive chaos of traipsing through our neighborhood mall, collecting more candy and checking out the other kids’ outfits. (Awesomely, one lady bent down to check out Dylan’s red, be-clawed lobster costume, and brightly announced that he sure was an adorable little clam.) We wrapped up that outing and came back home in time to knock on a few neighbor’s doors, where Riley performed admirably (“Twick or tweet! Happy Halloween today!”), and later we carved two more pumpkins while he helped us hand out candy to the three or four kids who came by our house. Then it was off to bed for the lobster and the pirate, and JB and I watched a scary movie while cherry-picking the best chocolates from Riley’s haul.
It was a great night, really. I’m kind of sad it’s over for a whole entire year.
I hope you had a good holiday, too.
Nov
1
This morning we loaded up the kids and trekked over to the Bellevue Square Mall, which is an upscale shopping mecca smelling faintly of complicated espresso orders and fifty-dollar bills. It’s not the usual sort of place I think of when it comes to kid-friendly activities, but the weather was dour and our options were limited. We made our way to something called the “Kid’s Cove”, which was essentially one large walled-in section of floor filled with soft rubbery shapes for kids to play on. Parents sat around the perimeter of the Cove, while its innards teemed with toddlers. There were maybe fifty kids in there just galloping around, and Riley was instantly sucked in, as though he’d been grabbed up by a tidal current. We sat there on the sidelines, like all the other parents, watching Riley bob to the surface now and then and wave at us. Dylan perched on my lap, softly clapping his hands and making his contented/interested noises: “Beh! Meh. Bmmm.”
We did that for a while, stroller’d over to World Wrapps for some lunch, then headed home with two tired, mostly happy kids. As far as excursions go it wasn’t exactly what you might call adventurous, or even very interesting, but if you would have suggested that location to me a few months ago I would have laughed myself sick. “A toddler and a baby, in that snooty mall?” I’d have said, slapping my knee in a jolly manner. “SMOKE ANOTHER ONE.”
I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to get comfortable with taking both kids out and about — maybe it’s that Dylan is a little more predictable, a little less likely to randomly spray an entire semi-digested bottle of milk down my shirt. Maybe it’s that Riley is officially old enough to be hissed at, Mommy-Dearest-style, if his behavior strays into the unacceptable zone, and these days he actually responds to Stern Admonishments and Dire Threats instead of fishflopping on the ground screaming. Maybe I’m just realizing that cabin fever, if left unattended for too long, results in eye-glaze, clock-watching, and way too many goddamned episodes of Curious George.
It’s funny, I never would have thought that a morning spent sitting at a mall and NOT SHOPPING would be any kind of fun, but it’s all about finding things to do with the kids now. Sometimes I rail against this fact in my head, I get frustrated and wish I could just go do what I want for once, and sometimes I find myself sitting in some dorky Kid’s Cove, thinking, you know, this is really nice.
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