James had taken Mal last time, so I had to make sure we had Mal's socks and the 5-visit play ticket. Found the latter easily, but had to dump the contents of my massive purse out before I could locate the former. I handed Mal his socks, I did a quick sweep for my phone, realized I had no idea where it was and didn't feel like spending more time looking for it, and we braved the drizzle out to the car... only for me to realize that I hadn't grabbed my keys. A dart back in, and we were off.
Once we got to the gym, it was properly pouring. Cars in the far lanes were shooting up huge walls of water as it accumulated in deep puddles along the side of the street, and I was concerned that if it kept raining, we'd have to stay in that shopping center all day because the water was about as high as I'm comfortable driving over at the entrance.
When we got out at the building, there was water standing in the "greenbelt" between the parking lot and the building. It's a weird set-up because they have maybe 2 stone blocks you can walk across, so our choice was to find where those were or to try to slip quickly in near where we'd parked. I realized Mal wouldn't be able to make it across so picked him up... then stepped right into about ankle-deep water. Fortunately, I was wearing Crocs. Also fortunately, I had a back-up pair of socks (no, I wasn't wearing clogs; they're dressier shoes).
We stepped in out of the rain and got checked in. I looked all around and couldn't find Mal's socks. Then I remembered that I'd handed them to him in the house, so they were probably somewhere he'd set them. So we paid $2 for a pair of socks there, and they're just plain socks, as opposed to the ones we usually use from Altitude Jump Park, which have the grabby little nubs on the bottom. I turned our shoes over to dry and picked up everything to step into the play area. As I did so, my can of Diet Coke fell, hitting the ground and rolling about 10 feet. Memo not to open that for a while.
Mal played for about an hour, and I wasn't feeling 100%, so when he wanted to swing, a move which I know includes his kicking me for amusement, I was less than enthusiastic. At about the same time, the lady who teaches the sensory art class came over and said, "We're about to shoot a video for my art class; would your little boy want to do it?"
We've never gone to the class because it costs extra, beyond the free play (which is significantly more expensive than My Gym was), and Mal just isn't in a place to get the full benefit of anything that structured. But for free? We're in!
Oh, also... Mal was wearing pajamas. He was actually giddy about doing that, because they were the red and white striped Hanna Andersson PJs, and he knew the white would pop in the black-light room. Also, I felt like death warmed over, but had managed to put on lipstick and eye liner on the way over, so in case I ended up in the video, at least there was that.
I was happily surprised that Mal sat on the colored circle as Ms. Chelsea asked. She explained what they were going to do, then set them loose after they'd put on smocks. Everything was winter-themed, so there was a paper mitten where the kids could glue on tissue paper squares. Mal wasn't interested in that at all.
There was one station where she had wreaths cut out of paper plates, and the kids could glue on green bow-tie pasta pieces and red popcorn kernels. Mal completed two of those holly leaf and berry combos before he decided he'd had enough of it.
He is with crafts as I am with home improvement stuff. I start enthusiastic, then say, "Mehh. Boring. Good enough." when I'm about half way through.
This next one surprised me, though.
It was a set up to paint a picture of an igloo with ice cube paints. Mal was freaked out. He didn't like that it was so cold (per his usual desire to have everything exactly room temperature), but also was horrified by the fact that the paint was getting on his fingers. In the picture above, I'd tried to get him to use a strip of paper towel as a wrapper, but he still wasn't ever on board for this one. He wanted to be, but couldn't get past the cold and messiness.
Mal did enjoy drawing on the chalkboard with Ms. Chelsea.
Her: What are you drawing?
Mal: Lightning.
Her: Oh, good! It was raining pretty hard out there, wasn't it? I'll draw some clouds. Can you draw a cloud? Here's my rain.
Mal: No. Lightning McQueen.
Her: Oh! The race car! Okay. Can you draw a road for him? Where is his road? I see. Is that the road?
Mal: No. That's a lightsaber.
Her: From Star Wars?
Mal: Yeah!
This went on for a few minutes, then Mal announced proudly, "Now I drew Finn."
Her: From Star Wars?
Mal: No. From Cars 2!
Her: I'm just getting my movies messed up today.
Me: In your defense, there are Finns in both movies.
Mal: There are 2 Finns!
By far, though, Mal's favorite thing was the "cloud dough." He kept going back to that after he'd try each new, different thing.
She had made it with some red glitter and peppermint oil, so it was super sparkly and smelled good. In the end, the filming had clearly wrapped up and I had to move Mal on or he would have stayed in there all afternoon.
We left soon after that, and not only had it stopped raining, but the water had gone elsewhere from the streets and mostly from the grass area. When we got into the car, I realized that Mal had actually brought his socks. They were just up under the dash board in the very front, so I hadn't seen them. Oh well.
As we waited in the drive-through at P. Terry's, I realized that I had several remnants from my lemon poppy seed protein cookie breakfast in my teeth, and hoped I didn't actually end up in any of the promotional video, after all.
Then when we got home, I found my phone in the closet in my skivvies cubby, naturally.
Mal had a bit of a rough afternoon. I don't know how many times I mentally said "Jesus, take the wheel." But as I was preparing dinner, James went outside with him for almost an hour, and while they did that, I decided to make Mal some cloud dough for use at home.
We were almost out of flour, so I used half whole wheat, and we didn't have any peppermint but I used some lemon extract and some almond extract (Interestingly, the final result smelled like my Aunts Polly and Clyda's house). Oh, and of course glitter.
Mal loved it! And James and I got to eat dinner while he sat at the table, happily playing, for quite some time. It's a lot easier to clean up than the Hawaii sand I've been letting him mess with.
Glitter goes with construction vehicles, right? Also, can you tell from this picture that his cuff is practically brown? I stripped him fairly soon after I took this picture.
Now, wish us luck. I've tried to prepare Mal for the fact that tomorrow is his dad's birthday, and there will be presents to open. But he cried about it today and will likely do so tomorrow, as well, so... Jesus, take the wheel. :)
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