charlie and nathan

Almost every Thursday, Charlie and I meet our next door neighbors for a playdate. The little boy, Nathan, is about 6 months younger than Charlie and now that they are both walking, they have a ball together! Charlie really likes their daughter, Jessica, who just turned 6. We alternate houses and sometimes venture to the pool in the neighborhood. Today, however, we ventured to the mall nearby. They have recently added a soft play area for little kids that opened in June. Debbie, the mom, recently found it and said Nathan really had fun. Jess is visiting her grandmother this week so it was just the boys. Debbie will be headed to get her on Thursday so we moved our playdate to today.

The mall is doing alot of renovating so once I got through all the construction zones and found an elevator that worked, we made it to the play area. (I passed two elevators that were out of order and the one I found was way at the back of the store!) The play area was really cool and at first was really crowded. But, after about 30 minutes or so, the kids slowly began to leave and it was calm for a while. Charlie was running around everywhere, squealing, and just having so much fun. Nathan seemed to be doing the same. Charlie would slide down the slide all by himself! That was an accomplishment for him. I've gotten him to slide by himself if I am standing at the bottom to catch him but today I just sat on the bench and watched. It was great! Nathan did the same but would go down head first and just roll when he hit the bottom. He cracks me up! Debbie and I had fun giggling at Nathan as he tried to climb into some of the play things and then he would just tumble out. Charlie, on the other hand, being the cautious one he is, had to have you put him in it and then help him out. He would climb into one of the paly structures but with the others, he had to have help. He loved crawling through the tunnels as well but spent most of his time just running and sliding. Charlie was drenched in sweat by the time we left so needless to say, he went right down for a nap once we got home.