Skip to main content

Gymbo's, Centennial Park and the zoo, oh, my!

Friends, days just don't get any bigger than this for Miss Willow!
She's taking a nap now (or is SUPPOSED to be taking a nap ... quiet down in there, kiddo!), but when she wakes, we'll be heading to Gymboree Play & Music class in Green Hills.
Willow loves this class, and Cherish and I find the cost is more than worth it. Willow gets to romp around an ever-changing gym with other tots her size. When we first started going, Willow was a bit of a bully, pushing around the smaller kids in the 6-10 month class (Willow is a giant among peers), but once we bumped her into the 10-16 month class, she's fit in well; she likes mimicking what the bigger kids do.
Willow's favorite activities at Gymbo's (the classes are led by an instructor named Rachel and her puppet sidekick Gymbo, a clown who runs the place and, I think, has all the instructors brainwashed) are rolling the air log, going through tunnels, being showered in balloons and dancing with Gymbo.
Willow loves Gymbo (hmm, maybe he'd make a good birthday present; she has her first birthday on May 13, after all).
We go to Gymbo's place every Wednesday. Usually, we go to Centennial Park afterward. I like to walk the One-Mile Loop, and Willow likes watching all the people and animals (and the people who are like animals). Willow also likes the playground there because there tend to be more kids there than at the playgrounds in Springfield (and the moms there usually aren't afraid of me like the ones in Springfield). Also, more dads take their kids to Centennial Park than to the parks in Springfield (I think one dad I spoke to one day was a Titans player because that dude was HUGE; I don't know who he was, though).
Willow and I also picnic at the tulip garden at Centennial Park. She likes it there because I let her room in the nicely manicured grass (and there aren't too many wood chips lying around for her to stick into her mouth).
But today we're not going to Centennial Park.
We haven't been to the Nashville Zoo for a few weeks, so I think it's time for our triumphant return. We can't let our membership go to waste.
Willow's favorite thing at the zoo is the gargantuan playground, which alone is worth the price of admission. Now we just play around on the tot mat and swing and slide, but I don't think it will be too long before Willow is climbing all over that place (she Zombie Walked a lot on Tuesday).
Willow's favorite animals at the zoo are the flamingos and the monkeys, probably because they make the most racket. We try to see the flamingos around 2 when it seems they're always awake and roaming around. On our last trip, Willow witnessed two of the flamingos fighting! The monkeys are always yapping, and you can hear them from anywhere at the zoo.
We're taking a picnic today too, so we'll be snacking before we hit any of the attractions.
But, boy, on such a beautiful day, won't it be fun!!!
I'll try to remember to tweet some pictures to Facebook.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With baby comes packing (and a lot of it)

Willow, Che and I are traveling to see the grandparents, aunts, cousins and Mos (or is it Moes or is it Mo's or is it Moses?) in Henderson, Tenn., this weekend. And that brings up one of the big differences between being a couple without kids and being a couple with kids: packing for travel (they even have an app for that, God bless us packing-weary parents). Back in my pre-child days, packing hardly mattered, probably taking up 1 zillionth of a tenth of a percent of my brain capacity to do (six days equals six days of socks and underwear plus some T-shirts, some shorts, a pair or two of pants, put on some shoes, throw in some toothpaste, and I was off). That's hardly the case anymore. Take, for example, if you have a spit-up-prone baby. Do you take two burp clothes, four, eight or, maybe, 16? Better take 24. And how many diapers do you take? Or wipes? Do I need to take baby medicine? Is it going to be cold or warm or cold and warm or warm and hot then ... AACK!!! You get t...

Willow's morning of play, play, play exhausts poor, old Dad

Willow's playtime universe continues to grow. Rapidly. Witness. In the midsummer heat, I take Willow out to our shaded backyard in the morning to play. And play she does. She climbed into her swing first. After I pushed her for a while, I got her out of the swing and put her in her wagon so she could help me convey bags of sand from the garage to the backyard to fill her sandbox (part of her new swing set) and her water table sandbox. She took rake and shovel and played in the sandbox for a bit. Then she waddled over to the deck and started to climb the steps to get to the water table. She played in the sand a bit, but most of her time was used dipping water up and out of the water part of the water table. Most the water ended up all over her. After that she wanted off the deck to go back to swinging. Instead I retrieved the new tricycle Cherish procured from a Franklin recycle center and cleaned it up. Willow loved the trike, holding on to the handle bars while I pushed her...

Willow's tooth-brushing goes from rocky to rocking

Willow has been giving us fits for months now about brushing her teeth before bed. She's usually better brushing her teeth in the morning, meaning it's less like wrestling an alligator for me, but at night before bed, she turns into the Tasmanian Devil. We've tried making the tooth-brushing as fun as possible for her, but I usually end up holding her against her will while I try, mostly in vain, to pry the toothbrush into her clamped-shut mouth. Sometimes we give up. We've tried singing to her. Dancing. Story-telling. Tickling. Nothing has really worked. But Mommy might have hit on the solution. A singing toothbrush. Yesterday Mommy brought home a toothbrush that belts out Queen singing "We Will Rock You." This toothbrush ROCKS! And Willow loves it. We tried it out last night, and on the inaugural brushing, Willow brushed her teeth successfully all by herself. She danced the whole time too. And I stayed bruise free (I also, surprisingly, had more energ...