toys

after church today i took alan and maya to rotary park. we think that park is pretty cool. they have these really crazy, space age-y toys that are unlike any other toys i've seen at a park. there were a bunch of other kids there and alan and maya were having fun romping around on all the toys (maya mostly threw bark at the toys and yelled things like "a-lan" and "yeah"). at one point i took maya over to the slide and this girl who looked about 6 years old said to me "this isn't very safe for babies." i wanted to say "um, thank you. the next time i have a parenting question, i'll know who to call." instead i just said "yes, if they don't have their mommies with them." and...."so, where is your mommy, oh wise one?" geez, i am just a little too sensitive.

our next adventure was with one of the dad's standing around. he seemed to think that while i was chasing an active toddler it was a good time for him to make conversation with me about how brilliant his son is. i'm always suspicious of older (than me) men who like to randomly make conversation (it probably has somethign to do with "perv patrol" when i was a kid...but that is a story for another post.) anyway, he kept telling me about how his son's nervous habits and learning problems are now miraculously gone after switching schools while i kept trying to keep an eye on maya and make sure none of the flying bark ended up in her mouth or up her nose. somehow i don't do a good job of giving off the "i really didn't come to this park to talk about your kid" vibe so I'll have to work on that. he kept talking and talking and then luckily i suddenly had a life or death situation with maya (she was standing around looking bored) and i had a good excuse to walk away. i began to question if his kids really were his because when he tried to talk to them they ignored him.

so about 20 minutes later and from the other side of the playground i turned around and a bunch of the kids had left including alan. i started scanning the park for him but i couldn't find him. and then i heard this girl tell her mom that she wanted to go play in the picnic shelter. i turned and looked and there were all the missing kids, including alan. they had arranged the tables so that she could run in a circle on the tops of them. go figure. brand spanking new toys unlike anything else in wenatchee and they play with the stuff you can find anywhere and that wasn't even designed to be a toy. i had to rip alan away from their fun game when it was time to go home. i told him he can come back to our house and play wtih the broken toys he fishes out of the garbage...instead of the awesome, new, state of the art toys we paid a million dollars for that he got for Christmas.