E-Bean - Darebaby!!!

E is a little daredevil. She has no problem climbing by herself up a playstructure to the top of a three-or-four-story enclosed tube-slide and sliding down, again all by herself. She's the Baby Without Fear (okay, she doesn't always like some sudden, loud noises or falling backwards in the bathtub but still...). This makes things interesting sometimes when there's some ladder or pole or something that you are supposed to use to get down off a certain playstructure. For a larger kid, this would be no problem but E's just a bit too small to get down by herself. But does that stop her from trying? Heck no - remember, she's Darebaby! She will fearlessly step off a ledge on the slim chance that her foot will somehow make it onto that rung that's almost out of reach. And that's when Mommy or Daddy must rush in to catch her. And of course, she finds it quite fun. Today she was jumping to me off the play gym and laughing as she did it.

And she is still relatively fearless despite some recent tumbles. We live on the second story of our building and there's a bunch of concrete steps that lead up to the little landing area which then in turn leads to our door. E pretty much tumbled head first off the edge and down the stairs. She did catch herself with her arms, so it wasn't too bad, but after catching herself she slid down a step or two, hitting her mouth on the way down. So she had big, swollen, purply and bloody lip and some scratches above her top lip. Not a happy camper. But did this deter her from future escapades of fearlessly stepping off of steps? Of course not. At home group, she stepped off some more concrete steps (it was only a two-step little thing down to the back yard from the back door of the house). And she didn't quite land her step and once again got hurt (not anywhere close to how she did it at home, though).

So that's our Darebaby - Baby Without Fear! (Minus red costume or nunchuks of course, for those who get the reference)

Fairytale Town

Today E and I went to Fairytale Town in Sacramento for the first time.

Fairytale Town has been here for a long time. I think Ian even said he had been when he was small. At first, I wasn't sure if E would enjoy it, as it seemed to be a large playground based on nursery rhymes and songs. Was she too young? Could she get to the top of some of those big slides? She doesn't know any of the rhymes, so would she care. It seemed that the consensus online was that 18 months was the lower end of being able to enjoy Fairytale Town, so we thought, let's just see.

We're happy to report that she ended up loving it! It only cost a very inexpensive $3.75 to get in for the both of us (E was free). And we stayed there for about 4 hours. We even went through the park twice. We also got a Zoo Key which you stick in a slot on a metal box and it sings a song or tells you a story (relating to the nursery rhyme in that area). It took E about the whole day to figure out the key thing, but once she did... she went key crazy!



Another highlight was the animals. They had Mary's Little Lambs, the Three Little Pigs, Billy Goats, Peter Rabbit and some farm animals. E was most excited about the goat. What does a Goat say? "Baaaa", she answers. Close enough.



The slides and all the other props are climbable (and padded below with soft playground foam stuff for the inevitable fall). And climbing over and through everything is encouraged. E liked this, but I think she would have a little easier time getting up those steep steep stairs (to go down the BIG steep steep slides) and also playing on the oversize nursery props when she gets older. She needed a lot of "op" (her way of saying help) and was often elbowed (or even pushed... tisk tisk other kids) out of the way as she was slower and smaller than most of the kids playing on the equipment. But in the last hour we were there, most of the kids had gone home for lunch or a nap and E could climb on things all by herself. She did pretty well too.

Here she climbed up the steps to the tractor and even got herself into the seat all by herself. If you notice her legs are dangling about a foot off the bottom. She liked "driving" the tractor.


"Hey Honey, if you're gonna drive, look where you're going!"

One thing we would have liked is for the annual membership to be cheaper. It was $40 for two people!! The zoo across the street was only $50. So I guess if we go back we'll just pay the normal admission, because I highly doubt I'll be heading to Fairytale Town more than 10 times a year (even if it is across the street from the Zoo and we're there a couple time this next year).

Well, for more pictures of our adventures at Fairytale Town, see our Flickr banner to the right. Enjoy!