Playdate Bonus: JumpZone

This week we met with some of our play date friends a second time at the Jump!Zone Party Play Center here in Columbia. Strangely enough, I didn't get any pictures of Eddie or Caroline, but they were there with their moms, I swear!

The first thing you run into after registering and taking your shoes off is a big tree house with a very long slide. This was Jacob's favorite spot. He climbed up several times and slid down the slide. Once he wanted me to go up, but I feared I was too big for the slide. Later, I saw a mom go down the slide, so I missed out. We must go again. Here is Jacob, surveying the slope:

"Why doesn't the slide go from the crow's nest?" Jacob asks.

Here he is in mid-slope:

The main attraction of Jump!Zone is the seven or so large inflatable climbers. Jacob was not so interested in these. In fact, I couldn't coax him on to any of them. He would look at them. He would tell me to go in without him. He would drum on them. But he wouldn't go in. I don't know if it was the noise from the blowers that kept them inflated or the number of other children there, but he was not interested in playing on them. Maybe he thought they weren't safe:

Jacob as Safety Inspector (sans hard hat, since he doesn't like hats)

Lucy, on the other hand, loved the inflatables and would have stayed much longer if we'd let her. She went into the SpongeBob inflatable for a good ten minutes. She also went into the Jurassic Park inflatable, which featured palm trees, large bones and a climbing wall. She got to the base of the climbing wall but wasn't proficient enough to ascend. Some of the other kids who had climbed up weren't to proficient either. They dropped down and bounced on top of Lucy. I charged in to extract her Ian Malcolm-style. Luckily she was unhurt and unfazed. We went back to her favorite inflatable where things were calm enough for me to take pictures:

Lucy smiles for another camera

Lucy loved crawling and walking along the alligator's back. What a daredevil!

I think this mom secretly wanted to play in there too!

Lucy definitely got her money's worth out of Jump!Zone. Since we had a two-for-one coupon, I guess Jacob got his money's worth too.

Jacob plays at the park

Columbia is blessed with many park areas for children's amusement. Some are pretty simple with just some swings and a sand box. Others are more elaborate. Over near Savage Mill is the Savage Park, which is entirely unlike its name. You'd expect gladiator arenas and pig-roasting spits. In stead, the park has nice baseball fields, tennis courts, grills, restrooms, and, best of all, a children's playing area. We went on Thursday after dropping off Aunt Rosemary to work. Jacob had a blast, but he definitely showed that he is his father's son.

The play area has plenty of slides to go on:






But after he discovered what he thought was the best slide, he showed no interest at all in the other slides. Even when I tried to encourage him to try the others, he would just go back to the tallest, steepest one he could find. And ride it again and again and again. Here's one of the trips, caught on my cell phone:




So how does this make him like me? Every time we go out for Chinese food or order take out, I almost invariably order cashew chicken, since it is my favorite dish and there was one really good takeout place that had the best cashew chicken I've ever had. So I am pretty loyal and very decisive (which is atypical for Reningers ordering food). Jacob is the same way with his slides. We'll have to go back to the park and see if he still sticks with the same one.