>Tot Spot Café | Team Rasler

>I never had a chance to write about last week’s Friday Field Trip with everything else going on.

{Note: I should find out today whether I have gestational diabetes, but at least I discovered that I could handle the four blood draws yesterday morning more or less calmly. Whew.}

Anyway, my good friend and I drove a loooong way north to Woodinville to go to a place we’d heard was The Place to take your kids and meet up with friends. Tot Spot Café is basically a big playroom with couches and tables all around it so you can order your coffee (or in my case, chai tea) and food and sit together while your kids wear themselves out.

First of all, it’s a brilliant idea, and we’re not sure why one of these places hasn’t opened up a lot closer to us. Second, once our boys got over how crowded and bright and busy the play area was…

they had a good time and so did we.

But the main attraction was this fabulous climb & slide that they had gotten installed 2 days prior to our visit.

This thing was a turning point in our lives. Up until now, Sebastian has loved slides, but wanted help to do them. Even the small ones. He was capable of climbing up, sitting down, and sliding without my help most of the time, but he would get anxious and since my hand was always nearby, it was easier to grab it than to sort it out himself. Also, I confess that I hadn’t let him do the really big slides at the playgrounds by himself because there were always spaces on the play structures with open holes (usually with ladders for bigger kids to climb), and it made me nervous having him up there by himself. He’s still not entirely coordinated.

But as I get bigger, it’s getting harder for me to climb up and slide down with him, and these tube slides are out. I told him he could go on the slide if he would do it himself. I climbed up and sat on the ledge, and my friend stood at the bottom for the first two runs. Then I declared that was it, and brought my large self back down to the ground. Well, that was NOT going to be it for my little slider. Somehow he believed that I wasn’t going to help him this time, and you know what? He figured it out.

Sebastian went up and down this contraption so often that he got all sweaty and had to change into a t-shirt. He came down smiling, singing, laughing, and having the best time of his little life.

Since then, he’s been doing slides at every playground like a champ, big ones and little. {Yes, I found a park that had a big slide without all the scary holes between the steps and the slide itself. More on my favorite parks for toddlers in some future post.} The point is that both of us needed the nudge to let go. I think this is the beginning of a pattern for how our second child will force some much-needed independence.

As for the Tot Spot Café? It’s fine, but not worth the drive for anything other than a field trip. My girlfriend and I spent most of the time dreaming up ideas for our own place that we would open closer to home, have more organized, and certainly serve better food – or better yet, set up shop next to a place that served great food!

This is what he looked like at the end of this very exciting morning…

Cute, eh? Too bad he slept 20 minutes in the car and then didn’t sleep again until bedtime. Sigh.

Today’s Field Trip is to Dizzy’s Tumblebus in Bellevue. If it’s good, this may be a place that Sebastian frequents next year, as it is close to Bellevue College where I hope to take the infant class with our little one once a week!