Swimming and other indoor fun on rainy days

It's been a chilly and rainy week here in Austin, and so we've been looking for fun things to do inside. Fortunately there are lots of fun places to go to play inside. Not necessarily free, of course, but still fun.

We went to a nearby inflatables place on Friday, called Extreme Fun. It's a huge place and full of gigantic inflatable slides, the sort you'd usually see outside at carnivals. I've been to other inflatable places around town, and this one has the biggest ones.



Of course, Carter isn't yet so interested in jumping on them. He did, however, spend a good 20 minutes running up and down this ramp, and laughing as if it was the best thing in the world!



They have a nice baby area, and he liked the toys there.



At the top of that ramp is a huge foam pit, and he got in it and played a little, though he wasn't too sure about it. I imagine he'll be diving into it in another year.



This morning we went to Jungle Java in Round Rock, which is basically a big indoor place place and a coffee bar. Yes, pretty much exactly what moms of little kids need! There's even free wi-fi, for those who have kids old enough that they can take their eyes off them for a while.



We came here last spring, and Carter was a bit young to really enjoy it, even the toddler area. Today he really had a lot of fun.







Here's a little video of him going down the big slide. Oddly enough, this was the only time he didn't go down on his stomach.



I got a coffee drink and watched him play, and it was really fun. We'll definitely be going back!

He also had a swim lesson this morning, and I remembered to take my camera this time. (He goes to Emler Swim School, in case I haven't mentioned that before.) There are 4 two year olds in the class, and they sit on little turtle mats while the teacher works with them one at a time. Carter still gets up from his mat every now and then, but is getting better at sitting on it and waiting.



I took videos of several of the times Carter was in the water with the teacher and edited them together into one video. The quality seems a little off, but you can still get an idea of what the class is like. In case you were wondering what the heck a swimming lesson for 2 year olds looks like. :-)



His language seems to have taken another jump in the last week or two. He'll come out with funny little sentences every now and then, though it's mostly still 3 words at a time. He's also been very explicitly pluralizing lately, which is funny. He'll say, "I likes truckses, I like trains, I like cars." This morning he was licking a bar of soap (don't ask) and saying, "I like soaps!" He likes to sort through his set of alphabet magnets and find matching upper and lower case letters, and then bring them to show me. He'll say, "I show you L-ses! (or E-ses, S-es, M-ses, etc.)"

He's also starting to sing entire songs more clearly, particularly ones from the TV shows he likes. I keep waiting for him to be able to carry a tune. I'm not sure when that's supposed to happen, heh. His current favorite TV show is Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. He LOVES it, and gets ridiculously excited when we put the DVD in. He requests it all the time. He's starting to get into Dora and Diego and Blue's Clues too. Yo Gabba Gabba seems to have lost his interest lately, but he still loves Signing Time and Wonderpets. Okay, I really let my child watch too much TV, don't I? :-P