Date Night 2013: March

Our March "date night" was actually a family date day. Somewhere, in searching for ideas, I ran across Totter's Otterville, a big play-place ("educational entertainment center," they call it) in Covington, KY, geared towards children under age ten. I worried that it would be too big or overstimulating for my kids [I never did blog about our disastrous trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, but let's just say it's obvious that we stay within a pretty small radius most of the time.], but it was perfect. Absolutely age-appropriate, and while not terribly glamorous, perfectly suited to my little brood.

It's all one big building, sectioned off by half-walls into little rooms. This keeps the different areas contained, but I still felt like I could see most everything well enough that I'd feel safe leaving one kid in one area while I was in another area, at least for a short period of time. Each room had its own designated purpose:

• miniature play room (though not miniature enough to be worrisome), with doll houses, action figures, animal figurines, etc.
• the under-18-months room, completely padded on the floor, with those big soft blocks to crawl over and a variety of baby toys

 

Happily exploring a toy in the baby room

• face painting station
• art room, with coloring pages and crayons out on the tables, and more art supplies to choose from 
• the train room, with two decked-out Thomas the Train tables, a host of Thomas-related trains, and a third table (pictured below) with chunkier Chuck trucks

We have a small set of non-talking Chuck trucks at home, which the boys have loved. Also, this is Silas standing (albeit quite wobbly) at a piece of furniture for the first time!

Owen would have stayed in the train room all day. In fact, he had to be dragged from the room, screaming, twice (once for lunch, and once to go home). Levi is barefoot because he got too excited/distracted and wet his pants (and socks and shoes), and while I was prepared with pants and undies, I did not bring extra socks. Lesson learned.

• Pretend Village, with house, dress-up room, diner, and grocery store

Filling his cart with Goldfish, melon, corn dogs, and two kinds of crackers.

Anybody surprised that I had to drag him away from the cash register?

• animal hospital room, complete with (inaccessible) live rabbit and lizards
• puppet show room
• large-motor room, with big blocks for building and a pint-sized ballet bar with a constantly-running ballet video playing, baskets of dance shoes and tutus, surrounded by mirrors
• pretend post office, including mailman's outfit, and a machine to send "packages" up a conveyor belt and down a chute (where Levi spent a loooooong time)
• cafe, where we ate cheap (if somewhat greasy) pizza and fruit cups
• and, of course, the ball pit and playground!

Hard to take pictures through the netting, but Owen's so-hard-it-looks-painful smile should give you some indication of how much fun they had. ;) 

Adults and children under 1 year old are free, and I had a buy-one-get-one coupon, so for $8 (not including lunch), we had a very full morning of entertainment and stimulating pretend play. I do believe we'll go back at some point -- maybe join forces, local friends, and make an outing of it?