The House of Fun

We went to an indoor play centre yesterday early in the afternoon. The only other children there were aged 2 to 5, since most of the older children would have been at school. Duncan was playing in his favourite part which is designed for 1 to 3 year olds, but since there were no little ones there at the time he was OK. That section has a nice slide, but the slide in the other section is much too scary for him. He was singing to himself; 'Welcome to the House of Fun' by Madness. It's the soundtrack for one of his beloved roller coaster videos.

Two boys aged 4 or 5 joined Duncan. They were playing with the foam blocks, and Duncan approached them. He laughed and imitated them in their game of jumping onto the blocks. The boys looked at me and whined that he was ruining their game. I just asked Duncan to come and play with Thomas and Lady on the 'pirate ship' (the other section). Duncan was as always these days, wearing his Captain Hook costume. Duncan didn't want to move. He started playing on the slide and in the ball pool again, and the boys were mocking his speech, saying 'go go ga ga' as if he was a baby, though he's bigger than they are. Then he passed the boys again, and one of them started kicking him! I sternly told the boy to stop; 'don't hit or kick him, I'm right here watching!' and took Duncan away. Duncan was upset and kicked at me a bit, but I distracted him by playing at being a crocodile.

The boys went off to terrorise other children and a few little girls came in. One of them was a real sweet heart. She went down the slide laughing with delight, making Duncan laugh with her. She started to play with him wordlessly, throwing balls and sliding and climbing and they ended up hugging each other.

Duncan was rather distracted by the shop, with loads of sweets in easy reach and which was unstaffed most of the time we were there. I had to move him away from it many times. He worked out all the things he wanted in order of preference;
'1, Kinder egg, 2, marshmallow, 3, apple juice with a straw, 4, ice-cream.' We actually got through the whole session without buying any of it. Bonus!

I'd warned Lady about the nasty boys, and when we were leaving I saw her in a corner talking to them. Then she stepped back, and did a jujitsu high kick in the air.
I asked her what had been going on. She told me that they had pushed Thomas on the big slide, and then tried to knock Lady over. She told them not to, and then demonstrated her martial arts capabilities. I think she was making a point. That's my girl.

Thomas loved the play centre. He's become so brave and outgoing recently. He went on the huge inflatable slide, and jumped so far off the top that he landed half way down before starting to slide. He asked a (nice) boy to play with him and somehow I think Thomas was dictating what they did and when.

His tooth fell out on Tuesday and he was so excited about the whole thing, especially the prospect of some cash! He cracks me up with how he talks. He sounds more grown up than he looks, and he's adopted lots of little phrases from films and TV. Echolalia? ;-)
We were watching a film recently where a character fell and bumped his backside. Thomas goes, 'Oh that's gotta hurt!' He's a cute and sweet boy, but he can be rather, well lets put it nicely, self interested. As I said to Gordon once, if Thomas were one of characters in Kubrick's film 'Spartacus', at the end of the film, he'd have stood up and shouted, 'well I'm not bloody Spartacus!'