Play places are like dog parks.

Play places are like dog parks- If your dog doesn't play well with others, don't take him to the dog park. If your kid can't walk by another kid without shoving, punching, grabbing him by his face to push him over, etc., don't take him to a play place. Now, if my kid could say, WALK, and was able to fend for himself a little bit, I'd let him take care of himself as long as no one was going to get really hurt. But, when some 3-year-old kid come over to my 1-year-old, who holding on to the wall just to stay standing, and is minding his own business, grabs Noah by his face and pushes him over, yeah, I have a problem with that. Let's just say I wouldn't have really felt all that bad if that kid had accidentally been stepped on.

Two for the price of one

Today there's 2 mini rants. Lucky you.

I went to Toys R Us with Noah to spend the rest of his birthday money. I wanted to get him some big ol' honkin' blocks and a push toy to help him with his walking. Classic kids toys, right? So, I went looking for the block section. You would THINK that they would put all of the similar toys together, right?! NO! Of course not! That would be too much like all the rest of the stores do it. We couldn't have that. That would make it much too easy for parents lugging around their kids around with them. No, they have everything sorted out by BRAND. So, if you don't know what brand the toy is that you're looking for, you're completely screwed. I went up and down the aisles looking for the blocks I wanted. First I tried the educational toys. I didn't find them there, but I DID find some with the arts and crafts. Makes perfect sense. Too bad those weren't the blocks I wanted. So we went up and down some more aisles. After about 15 minutes of this, I tried the Lego aisle in the "big kids" section, and behold, there they were! Of course! Why wouldn't I have thought to look with all the Lego sets first!? After all, blocks for a toddler should be with all the Lego's for 10+ or whatever the ages on those things are.

After we finally found the blocks, we went in search of the walker. I remembered from my previous trip to Toys R Us that all the big outside toys were in the back corner of the store, so that's where we headed. Yep, I found them. Too bad they were the $60 walkers instead of the $20 walker that I wanted. I had previously checked the website to make sure that this particular location had the one I wanted in stock, and now I couldn't find it. Oh, but wait, this is Toys R Us we're talking about. They wouldn't have all the walkers in one place. That would be too logical. No. Some of the walkers, the expensive ones, are in the back, all together, no matter what brand they are. The cheap walkers are sorted out by BRAND over with all the other baby toys. What is WRONG with them!? Why can't they stick to one lousy system? Either have everything sorted out by brand, or by toys. You can't have both. Or at least, you SHOULDN'T have both. So, after 40 minutes of wandering around Toys R Us, we got what we came for- blocks, and a walker. I'm not bitter at all.

Fog

So this time of year there's a lot of fog in Fresno and I frequently see on the news that there's a fog warning and "visibility is only 2 miles." Why does anyone need to be able to see that far? "Woops, I wouldn't have rear ended him if I would have been able to see for more than 2 miles." *rolls eyes*

Standing up!

Noah totally stood up by himself tonight! I was reading one of those books to him where he gets to lift up flaps, and the book was just a little too high for him to reach it sitting down, so, he stood up! I had such a "proud Mommy" moment. :) He did it a couple more times tonight, but of course, not when I wanted him to do it. Walking isn't too far off! Although, once he starts walking, I'll probably wish he would have stuck with the crawling.

He also discovered chocolate graham crackers today. He shoveled them in with both hands....I had to keep an extra close eye on him to make sure he didn't cram the whole thing into his mouth and choke himself...which he's been known to do.