architecture as play thing

when it's this cold outside, some of the running around needs to happen indoors.



cosmo and one of his pals made good use of a double stairwell in the fine arts building at IU (just down the hall from the beloved friends of art bookshop).



one would wait at the top while the other went downstairs. the trick was to walk back up so quietly, that the one at the top would not know which stairway had been chosen--- SURPRISE!



and...repeat.

SPRING BREAK!

carl and i love to shout SPRING BREAK! and joke about trips to ft. lauderdale, fl, to sip daiquiris and play beach volley ball with a bunch of drunk college students.



our actual spring break (thank god!) involves puttering around in the yard, taking walks in our neighborhood to check out pussy willows and crocuses in bloom, and a day trip to columbus, indiana, which is an hour away from here.

cosmo has been looking forward to this little jaunt. so much so, he would wake up, in the days leading up to the trip, and ask, "is it columbus day?" as it turns out, we went on st. patrick's day. the main attraction for us (besides the world-class architecture) is a children's museum called kid'scommons, which we were told featured a big house, where kids can explore all the inner workings, including plumbing. we had asked our librarian for some books with good drawings for pre-schoolers who ask "where does the water go?" and "what's under the house? what's inside the wall?" she suggested kid'scommons, and mentioned a giant toilet that kids slide down. that was all cosmo needed to hear. he could not stop talking about that giant toilet slide.

when we finally got on the road, we told cosmo we would be stopping for lunch before we went to the museum. he was not happy about any delays, but ended up falling asleep in the car, and lunchtime was just what he needed to wake up, and get ready for the big adventure. we walked from the cafe to the museum, and passed a block of "tree cozies," a public art project that we all enjoyed seeing. it reminded us of the houston group, knitta, please! though, obviously not exactly subversive, since it was sponsored by the local arts council...



we arrived at kid'scommons, and cosmo settled into a geometric puzzle(wedgits), which he had recently played with at a friend's house. a little later he found a ball track, and was mesmerized by that for a while before heading upstairs to the house exhibit. he found a plumbing demonstration that involved, what else? a pneumatic ball maze, cosmo's favorite sort of thing. he was not interested in leaving that area for a long time. in fact, he came back to it again and again.




when we finally made our way up to the giant toilet slide, cosmo was afraid to go down it. i went first, and he and carl met me at the bottom. it was a tight fit for me, but i made it. we mentioned it a few more times, but he became insistent that he did not want to go down the toilet slide. he creeped around, in all the nooks and crannies of the "house," which i thought was very nicely done. we made our way around the rest of the upstairs, played with a bunch of other stuff, including this awesome gear toy, and his first lincoln-log house. he ended up back at the ball track downstairs, and stayed there for what seemed like hours. we all had a great time, though you can't tell from the photos. cosmo usually looks so serious when he plays intently.






he was awestruck by the old player piano. we requested dueling banjo's from the motion picture "deliverance." not a piece originally intended for the piano, but amazing nonetheless. cosmo just stood about 3 feet away from the piano, hands clasped, in rapt attention, through the entire song.



on the drive home, cosmo kept coming up with new ways to inform us that he would never want to go down the toilet slide. my favorite was, "i don't want to go down the toilet slide all the days we go to the children's museum." we assured him that we got it, and that he never had to go down the toilet slide, ever, ever.

even though it was the driving force behind the trip to columbus.
it did occur to me, even before we went, that this is the stuff of pre-school nightmares--going down the toilet. part of his curiosity about it probably stems from his fears. oh, and i just remembered my own dream on this theme! guess it runs in the family.

once we got home, cosmo did some more hands on exploration of water and plumbing with the garden hose. these shots were taken just prior to the complete soaking of all clothing, and stripping down for the first naked-run-around-the-yard of the season.



i highly recommend kid'scommons, and i know we will be going back. it is so close, and such a pleasant drive through brown county. for those of you who live nearby, during the month of march, a wonderlab card gets you buy-one-get-one-free admission.

how's your spring (break, or no break) shaping up?

boo!

it is not halloween yet, but autumn is in full swing around here. probably the most photogenic time of year. i made cosmo this witch hand puppet, and while it may look like the felted wool head was the hardest part, it was not. my first two attempts at the body (the part where the hand goes), failed miserably. i'd made it out of prefab craft-felt sheets, with some cute hand stitching. the first one was just too tiny for my hand, and cosmo couldn't get it to work either. so, i made another just like it, only bigger, and it was incredibly awkward (almost painful) to get it to move in a remotely life-like way. after looking around online for some images of puppets, i decided to scrap the felt-hand-stitched style altogether, and pattern the body off of my hand, in "puppet position." the shape is funny, but it works great. i think i want to replace the cape material with some black toule, but i didn't have any on hand. most importantly, cosmo enjoys visiting with her.



we took cosmo to this bizarre place on the edge of town called the haunted train. we didn't want to take him to a haunted house because his relationship to "scary" is quite unpredictable these days. but we'd driven by this place, and it looked like something we had to check out. turns out, it is a train museum, open year round, and they have a haunted house on weekend nights in october. so we just drove out there on a sunday afternoon, met the owner, and wondered around. one could imagine how terrifying this place would be at night, with a sound track and some black lights, but in broad day light, it was just strange.



it felt like being backstage at the magic show, with all the secrets revealed. cosmo would walk by a "zombie" in a coffin and he'd say "oh, that's SCARY, too" but was clearly not scared. and he'd ask questions like "why all those babies in that water? why that water's red?" reasonable questions, if you ask me.



our next door neighbors have a rope swing, made all the more fun with a pile of leaves to fall into:





lastly, i got the bright idea to make cosmo a mudhole to play in before it gets too cold. the morning i went out to dig it, he was so excited, he got into it in his pajamas!

equation

one little yellow bouncy ball +
one rather narrow kitchen +
one two year old boy =
SO MUCH FUN!



he played this non-stop for a good 30 minutes (which is the equivalent of hours in toddler time),
and his excitement did not wane. i tried, in this video, to capture his funky leg moves as he chased the ball across the floor, but some things just don't translate.

some/thing new

the second installment for robin's some/thing blog party.

one of the gifts cosmo got for his belated xmas was a little people zoo. he got it from the same aunt who gave him a little people garage last year. the zoo is part of the next level in the fisher price collection, i guess, which means it has "educational value." there are 26 animals, each with a letter printed somewhere on its body. it comes with a mat, and various molded plastic zoo props. printed on the mat is a path with each of the letters of the alphabet, and a picture of the animal. when you press the A spot on the mat, it says "A" then, " Alligator begins with A" if you press it again, it makes an alligator sound. for animals that don't make recognizable sounds, like giraffes, there is a munching sound, or, for the x-ray fish, swishing water. there is also an image of water on the pad, which makes a splash sound when pressed.



my complaints about this toy are many. first of all, the design flaws: 1) most of the animals do not fit into the little alcoves carved out in the zoo structures (the jaguar, the one exception, is pictured above, peeking out of the "tree"). 2) if you line up all the animals in order, on the path on the pad, they barely fit, and it is almost impossible to use the animal itself (as intended) to press the button. this leads to mild frustration for two year olds. 3)the plastic waterfall is almost useless. animals don't slide down it in a satisfying way, and though it kind of opens, and animals can drop down into it, most of them get stuck. annoying. 4)there is a little perch on top of the main structure that opens up, but it's not clear why, and no animal can fit inside. the thing that bothers carl the most is that some animals have other little animals attached to them, but they can't be removed. for instance, there is a bird on top of the hippo, and the penguin has some baby penguins permanently melded to its body. this asinine feature is in keeping with the other little people, who have things like wrenches in their hands, or cell phones, depending on which set they came with.

as xta has already pointed out in her post from last year on the subject of little people, these figures are fat. the animals are chunky and, in my opinion, overly cute and cartoony. they don't teach the child much about animal identification. it's not that i think all representations in a child's world of objects should be realistic. i really appreciate a lot of the abstract and imaginative renderings in many of the children's books we have, and cosmo's favorite plush toy is a piece of toast with arms, legs and a big toothy grin. but i really believe there is more value in playing with animal figures that look like animals instead of marshmallows with smiley faces. case in point: ostrich. one of the most important features of an ostrich, for distinguishing them from many other birds, is their wacky proportions. they have these rather large bodies, stretched out necks, tiny heads, and long skinny legs. not according to fisher price. just take a look at their version of an ostrich. sorry to belabor the point, but an ostrich does not have short chubby legs--by definition!



cosmo has another collection of animal figures that justin gave him last year. they are much more realistic, and cosmo has enjoyed many hours of play with these, and, i'm sure will continue to incorporate them into his "work" for years to come. as a comparison, here is the ostrich from that collection. it looks kind of like an ostrich. weird.



for his part, cosmo likes the little people zoo just fine. in fact, he plays with it a lot. he has tried to put each and every animal into the little tree alcove, and seems sad that only one of them fits inside. he likes the letter aspect of it, because he's into letters right now, and he's enjoyed arranging, directing and pretending with small figures for some time. but i feel certain that he'd like it just as much if the animals looked like...well, animals.