Our first toddler play group meeting

Last Saturday, I took Collin and Oliver to their very first toddler play group meeting. It was actually a twin toddler play group meeting through the local area twin club which I belong. I feel a little bad that this was the first one we have gone to, but you know the saying "better late than..."

It went pretty well, with only a few little blips.

Oliver, as it turns out, gets a lot of his fearlessness from Ethan. Meaning, Ethan needs to be there. As Oliver was trying to go up into the climbing structures, he discovered that it was scarier than he thought. He really wanted to go up, but then he would stand shaking and crying on the "steps." I had to snake myself in these alternating "steps" to get him, only he didn't want got. So, I pushed him up and then there he sat at the top... the top where I couldn't see him. One very nice mom (from the birthday party that was also going on there) asked her three year old to go get him and she agreed... went up... came down slide... "weee", she said to her daughter, "Where's Oliver?" to which her three year old said "who?" Sigh... That didn't stop her from asking her about three more times to do the same thing, which had the same results. Hmmmm. He would eventually get to the slide opening and then cry because he was afraid to go down it, no matter what encouragement Collin and I gave him from the other end... both of our head's in the bottom of the tubular slide, butts sticking out (thought you would enjoy that visual), yelling up to him. Once he came down, after the 20 minutes of drama total, he went right back to trying to climb up again. Huh?! Collin on the other hand tried once to get up, was not comfortable with it and that was the end of that.

Collin ran around going down a small slide. They both liked the basketball nets, but not to put the ball in. Instead they just liked to play in the area that said "please do not climb inside." Of course.

Though it was at an ice cream place, we didn't get any ice cream. That only worked because they didn't know it was an ice cream place, I did though, so that kind of sucked. Oliver did, however, find an m&m on the floor and promptly ate it. When I went to fish it out (wasn't sure what it was at first), it was still crunchy so I am assuming it was fresh and not previously spit out by another child. When I told one of the other twin moms she suggested hopefully that it was from the birthday party going on at the same time. As gross as it was, I know it was not the worst thing he has ever eaten... unfortunately.

All in all it was a lot of fun. I even got a few minutes to talk to a couple of the moms... woo hoo... play time for mommy too!