We (meaning the kids I babysit and Bug and I) went to this really cool place called Pretend City yesterday. It’s in Irvine and relatively new. I think they even opened this month. It’s super popular, loud and crowded but I think that might be only because they’ve been written about a lot in the local media lately. It’s geared toward ages 2-5 so if you have a kid that age who is a non-napper, I’d recommend going in the afternoon and avoid the morning rush. It was crazytown in the morning. Crazy but fun though. We loved it.

Basically it’s a pretend city (hence the name) in big office warehouse type building. They’ve got a bank and a grocery store, a farm and a police station… library, etc etc etc. Everything is kid-sized of course and you can play. Pretty much it’s your pretend world with real props. Well, plastic ones of course. You can work on the farm and dig up plastic vegetables, pick plastic apples off the wall and then take them to the market.

I might have to use this idea in a mural someday.

You can put on real rubber boots, a rain coat of sorts and a real fisherman’s hat and go fish in the marina. Bug loved the water works. Once you catch a fish with your net you can even wrap it up in brown paper. I loved that detail.

It’s all handled really well with minimal mess and fuss. I’m surprised that they can allow kids to get so hands on with so many props without chaos breaking out. I really hope this concept sticks.

Of course the water area was very popular.

What is cool about this little town is that kids can get a job so to speak or at least understand how jobs work. You can try on costumes, pretend to work and then punch your time card. They have little paper punch cards that they can stamp at various locations and then take to an ATM that dispenses real paper cash. That was a huge hit.

Of course nothing is super computerized or anything and you can rob the bank quite easily by sticking your punch card into the ATM over and over but that’s besides the point. Though I found it humorous that the seven-year-old boy I’m babysitting spent most of his time in the city swindling other little kids. Not that I think he’s going to grow up to be a con man or anything but I thought it was a bit funny that corruption breaks out no matter what the size of your population. And by size I mean, little kids.

After you get your hard-earned paper money you can go to the grocery store (sponsored by Ralphs, which I thought was cool. Go Ralphs!) and buy stuff! Bug LOVED this part. I think I have a little shopper on my hands. What I really liked about the grocery store area though was how the checkers (little girls in our case) took their job so seriously. There was no adult telling them what to do but they took each item and carefully scanned it. Then they hit a few keys and asked their little customer for whatever dollar amount they made up in their head. It was so real it was creepy. It really makes you realize how play is just preparation for the real world.

There was also a restaurant to work in.

And a theatre. Bug took a liking to the sound controls. The music was preset in one minute tracks but you could push buttons and make funny sounds. That was cool.

The building and construction areas were great. I would have liked to explore them more and take more pictures but they were very very busy with boys, naturally. Let me tell you, it was challenging to take photos in this place without getting everyone and their cousin in the shot too. Not to mention the lighting was unnatural (fluorescent? sodium? both?) and I HATE to use my flash so most of my photos are blurry but I figured you’d forgive me. It’s a place that you really have to see to understand, so blogging with photos seemed important.

We ended our visit in the art studio which made me happy of course. The kids made paper sushi. I thought that was ingenious. It’s basically a section of toilet paper roll wrapped in black construction paper, stuffed with tissue and then decorated with real rice and bits of colored paper. They looked remarkably real for paper and tissue.

Then we posed in the funny shadow area. There were so many things to do. We missed a lot of them because we were hungry for lunch. I could seriously see burning several hours here–which is nice for us because we are in the middle of a heat wave and it is HOT HOT HOT at home when you don’t have air conditioning. Spending some time in this indoor city was a blissful relief for me. I don’t care how many kids I have to wade through.

So that’s that! I’d give this place a thumbs up. And this is NOT a paid review. My trip was sponsored by the mom of the kids I babysit but admission is $10 for anyone older than 12 months and military and seniors get discounts. We say, “Check check check it out!”

Seven days is starting up again and since nobody complained about seeing my ugly mug (and feet and backside) for a week last time, I figured I could post my self-portraits here again. But don’t worry, I’ll try to throw in a few cuties of Bug too. So here I am playing the piano at the kids’ house I babysit. They just bought this house and it is amazing. We spent the whole day outside in the pool.

Which was so very fun until I decided to take my waterproof camera in the pool for some underwater photography. I got some good shots but then my camera leaked and my poor poor dumb waterproof camera died. I’m hoping if it dries out enough it will magically come back, you know like some cellphones do when you accidentally drop them in the toilet. Not that I know anything about that.

Before you agree with me about how dumb my waterproof camera is, I should probably share that a while back I accidentally dropped this camera and busted it on two corners where the battery and memory cards are inserted. So maybe immersing this camera in pool water wasn’t the best idea. I thought the seals were still water-tight but apparently they were not. Woe is me.

I’m hoping that whopping expensive warranty I paid for when I bought it will count for something. I don’t know if it covers user idiocy error though.

But hey aren’t these underwater photos cool?

I had a lot of fun swimming and splashing around today. I would say we had a lot of fun swimming but Bug refused to go in the water. I don’t know what’s up with her. She loves swimming (or splashing around on the steps and scaring the crap out of me by pretending to swim) but today she was suddenly overcome with fear. We cajoled her with water wings and promises of super fun floaty boat rides around the pool and she would have nothing of it. I’m thinking we need to go to the pool more often and get over that fear.

Do you like my neon toes? They don’t really look that bright in this photo but they are. They practically glow in the dark. I can walk down dark paths lead only by the glow from my feet almost. This is what I bought myself for my birthday. Toby gave me $100 bucks to go buy a new outfit for my birthday but a fool and her money are soon parted and I somehow blew $28 at the nail salon instead. Now that I’ve been walking around in this crazy 80’s flashback color for a few days I’m thinking I would have liked a blouse (or at least half of one) better.

I’m sorry I had to drop that last post on you. I know you understand and your comments are so encouraging but I still feel bad about doing it. I really didn’t want to but it had been fermenting in my brain since forever. And you know what happens when posts ferment in your brain. You get a blogging clog and everything you want to say seems irrelevant because you have this big elephant in the room that you can’t talk about. Next thing you know your blog is dying a slow painful death—which would probably be fine with a lot of my family members but unfortunately isn’t fine with me because to me it’s more than just a silly website.

But anyway! Onwards!

The other morning I woke up feeling sick. I just wanted to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling contemplating how much snot was lodged in my head. A pound maybe? A kilo? A liter? Who knows. There is no time for such thoughts when you have a toddler who thinks one must pop up and play the minute she opens her eyes in the morning. Resting is soooooo boring. Either you are awake or you are asleep and if you are awake that means you must be playing.

A long time ago I taught Bug that I wouldn’t get out of bed until I got my morning hug. Of course I invented this stall tactic in hopes that I could sneak in a few more winks while she cuddled with me. It sort of worked. But lately she’s taken to body slamming me and then staring at me wondering why I don’t just hop out of bed. “Get up mom! I hugged you. What’s wrong with you?” she seems to say. As if hugging automatically jump starts my mom brain in the morning. I so wish it did.

The day before I had promised Bug that we would go to the beach. It was hot then, but I put her off because I had some thing that I wanted to get done that seemed more important than building sand castles in the sun. We often battle over this, she and I, and I feel terribly guilty about it because what could possibly be more important than going to the beach when you have the luxury of living only a few blocks away from it? It really is a shame that we don’t go every single day. But we don’t. Why? Because I have to do stuff.

I’m just a stuff-doing sort of person. If I could figure out a way to take my laptop to the beach without ruining it with sand, I totally would. Also the glare is terrible on my screen and I need a power source because my battery is shot. Last time I checked, my extension cord wouldn’t reach.

So, the beach sans laptop it was. Promises are promises even when your head feels like a brick and the weather has suddenly turned cold. It’s not like it was snowing, it was just a little chilly. I tucked my greasy dirty two-days-without-a-shower hair into an ugly hat and headed out the door. Thankfully, there is a doughnut shop on the way to our beach that sells very large coffees for very cheap. A normal person would be embarrassed to show their face at the local doughnut shop looking like this but I’m a mom and I have very little vanity these days.

And that was the flattering shot. Did I mention I was sick? I looked like I felt.

We sat on a lifeguard tower while she ate her chocolate sprinkle doughnut and I sipped my extra-large coffee. I have to admit this isn’t a bad morning routine but of course breakfast on the beach was only part of my promise. I promised sand-castle building and that meant I was delegated to fetching water from the icy cold ocean.

Why do I always get this job? Oh yeah, because I’m deathly afraid she’s going to get washed out to sea. So off I went to fetch a pail of water. Surprisingly, the water was not as cold as it looked. Probably because the air was cold so the water felt warmer. Sometimes that happens.

We played at making sand castles for a bit and then Bug spied some caves. The tide was way out and great big rocks that are usually submerged under water were standing out in the sand just begging to be explored. I really didn’t want to explore them. What I really wanted to do was go home and curl up under a blanket on the couch but I knew that was a pipe dream. I’d probably get stuck watching Noggin all day and rebounding a kid off my back like I was her own personal trampoline.

I remembered exploring these very same caves with my brother when I was a kid so I decided to let her venture into them. They were just as magical and claustrophobic as I remembered. There aren’t any really deep caves here but they are low and the surf is right at your back making you feel like any minute a giant wave could come crashing up under the rocks and smash you to smithereens.

I knew the tide was way out and we’d have hours before we’d have to actually worry about getting wet but that doesn’t stop me from imagining getting stuck there in the rocks under water. I guess it’s just a deep fear that I’ve always had. That, and driving a car off a cliff into water and not being able to undo her carseat buckles in time before she drowns—those are two of my greatest fears. Even though I love the ocean and can’t imagine living far from it, I’m still very afraid of it.

The other day, when I was babysitting the kids that I always babysit at their ocean-front house, I for some reason couldn’t stop worrying about what I would do if suddenly a tsunami occurred. If water was everywhere and slowly leaking into the house, what door or window would I escape from? Would I let the house fill up with water first and then swim out a window? What possible escape route would keep all three kids safe? These are the silly worries that keep me up at night. If anybody has any expertise on this subject, please enlighten me so I can sleep better.

Of course we didn’t drown while we were exploring the caves and Bug thought it was all a great adventure. I survived even while carrying my extra-large coffee in one hand so it can’t be that scary. If you can hike while carrying a coffee cup, I’d say that was a sissy hike. But I will say that I was very happy to be back out of those caves. And even more happy to be hiking back up the hill towards my house and some warm blankets on the couch.

I never really did get my couch time but I did go visit my mom in the sticks and she let me stare at my computer vapidly while she watched Bug. Moms are so good for that. And yes, I am feeling better.