Play place with G-ma

Well, I had hoped to post a combo of zoo and play place pictures, but my mom has the zoo pictures and having some troubles sending them to me.  So, just the play place.  One of the days my mom was here we decided to go to an indoor play place called Be With Me.  It was cute.  It was basically just a ton of little rooms that each had a theme or different activity for kids: a sand box room, a pretend grocery store room, an art room, a multi-cultural room, and so on.  We didn't even make it to all of the rooms.  When we first arrived, Lucy started screaming because she had wanted to go to the park  (it was rainy) and we told her we were going somewhere "like a park but inside."  You had to go down some stairs to get to this place and she thought she was being tricked into something boring.  Luckily a well-placed picture of Curious George on the wall convinced her that we were in fact going somewhere fun.

We hit up the animal room first.  I was surprised by how readily Lucy walked up to this giant rabbit and started petting it, as she can be a little skittish with some animals.  They also had some birds, fish, turtles, and reptiles but the bunnies were Lucy's favorite.  They even got a kiss.

In the art room, you could paint a little white pumpkin.  Lucy has never been terrible excited about paint but she was very excited about this possibility and adamantly demanded paint when the art lady tried to interest her in just putting stickers on it.  A lot of paint made it on this little pumpkin.  So much that even after having let it dry for about an hour, we had to use a blow dryer to get it to a state where we could transport it home.

The art lady cracked me up a little.  I heard her asking a couple of the kids if they wanted some bling for their pumpkins.

In this room, they had a lot of instruments and costumes from other countries.  My little music maker was in heaven.

A "rainy umbrella."

I'm not really sure what this room was themed... entertainment, perhaps?  I only have pictures of Lucy playing this drum, but there was also a puppet theater, some more dress-up clothes, and a place where you could pretend to run your own Domino's pizza place (which was quite realistic). 

 James and I have been delighting in Lucy's literary memory lately.  She remembers all of her books and stories in great detail and can often be heard reciting them word for word as she plays.  One day a few weeks ago, I asked her what she wanted for dinner.  I did not expect what came out of her mouth: "a roast."  I laughed, confused, and then she said, "Cider?"  And then I realized she had gotten it from "Stone Soup," a book we've been reading recently.  When the stone soup is just about ready, the villagers decide that such a tasty soup should be served with a roast and cider, thus turning it into a great feast.  Anyway, another great literary moment happened in this little room, which had a trampoline, a little Lego play thing, and these toys that had really strong magnets in them.  Lucy picked up two of the magnet toys, jumped on the trampoline for a while and then held out the toys and proclaimed, "'Frog likes chocolate best,' said Toad, 'and so do I.'"  She was talking about a scene in the book "Frog and Toad All Year," in which Toad buys two ice cream cones, one for his friend Frog and one for himself.  I love her imagination.