Ikea visit

Today, Karen and Nancy made us all climb in the car and head over to Ikea. Apparently, they were having a closeout sale on train stuff because we bought every piece of train related product we saw. In the middle of floor 2, they had a small area set up with all of the bigger play toys you could buy--a rocking horse, a circus tent, a little kitchen set and a great big slide. In reality, the slide was only like 5 feet long, but to him that must seem pretty long. He ran from one toy to the other for at least 20 minutes before Karen and Nancy and Will finally abandoned us to go check out. We spent the next 20 minutes going up and down that slide. He would crawl up it, using his brand new sneakers for traction, and then slide down on his butt, climb up again, and slide down on his side, climb up again, slide down on his tummy. This, over and over and over again until we were both sweating and I wasn't even doing anything. There was nice little girl using the slide too. Her name was Mave. Or Rave. I suppose it could have been Dave, but they kept saying Mave, so let's stick with that. She was really polite, and although she was wearing fur, Tommy and I agreed that she was probably a decent person and that maybe her parents we're the ones that picked out the fur. After about 10 or 80 trips up and down the slide between the two of them, Mave's mother asked me what stage of play Tommy was in. I didn't recognize this question. I've never heard this question before. I concede that it is probably a legitimate question, but this woman saw that I was wearing tennis shoes and minor league baseball t-shirt and that I have a 14 year old's haircut, so  I'm not exactly sure what her expectations were. I told her that he was like "between the 3rd and 5th stage. Maybe like the 4th stage???" and then I grabbed Tommy and we got the hell out of there.

But you should see this kid crawl up and slide down. He loves it.

Here are a bunch of pictures.  I'll do better next time.