MiniGym Adventure

On Thursday, I was hanging with Sofian on my weekly Daddy Day Care day and got a call from Beth (PEPS pal Henry's Mom) saying that they were going to be at our neighborhood community center for the toddler MiniGym (which is basically a playtime free-for-all with various and sundry toys strewn about the gym -- it's also a great way to get the kids to run around and tire themselves out). So we met up with them as well as Ellis and her Mom, Amy, and had a pretty good time -- save for a rather disturbing moment that I'll get to in a moment.

Both Ellis and Henry are much more into movement and are trying out walking (either on their own or with the help of some kind of walking toy). Sofian, on the other hand, was quite content to hang with the various puzzle boxes (like the looping wacky abacuses and such), and I had to make an effort to get him to crawl around. I also placed him in a couple of the vehicle toys, which he seemed to enjoy.




Here's Ellis:



And Henry (aka, Lobster Mitts):



And some video of Sofian tooling around the gym:

Sofian at the MiniGym with Henry

SpeedRacer Sofian

Our PEPS trio was pretty much the youngest of the bunch, and there were several Moms there each with multiple kids. They had most of their kids out in the foyer feeding them a snack at the beginning of the gym time, when two of the kids (a 2-1/2-year-or-so girl and a nearly 4-year-or-so boy) came in to play. They picked up some plastic bowling pins and started attacking a large-sized baby doll with the pins, the boy screaming "Kill it! Kill it" and the girl yelling "Cut off its head!" Amy and I were gobsmacked and google-eyed at this. Were we witnessing some weird toddler version of A Clockwork Orange?

Their Mom did come in a few seconds later, after the yelling had died down but the bowling pins were still hitting their mark, and she put a stop to that. On one hand, I kinda wanted to let her know that she had some rather thuggish brutes for kids, but then decided better of that. Just one more reason to keep the telly away from Sofian. But the sad thing is, he'll learn all about Pirates of the Caribbean and the like all too soon from kids in pre-school and such.