"Ball! Ball!"

These days Madeline has become a little ball of unstoppable energy.  She's go-go-go from the moment she wakes up till she finally decides to go to sleep.  Unfortunately for us, going to sleep is no longer a priority for Madeline.  Instead, she goes-goes-goes in her crib for an hour or more until she finally can no longer fight the sleep monster.

Therefore, one of our top priorities on weekends is to tire the Maddie Bear out.  Last weekend was mild, so Eric brought her to the beach and let her run around like a maniac.  It took her all of about two minutes to fall asleep that night.

This weekend was freezing, however, so we searched for toddler-friendly indoor activities.  When a coupon for a local indoor playground arrived in the mail on Friday, it seemed like kismet, so we decided to check it out.  

It was pretty awesome.  The playground was huge.  Eric said it looked like a giant hamster cage.  There were tunnels, ball pits, crawl spaces, and ropes as far as the eye could see.  

Of course, most of the playground was way too big for Madeline to handle, but luckily, they had a toddler area complete with a mini ball pit, one tunnel and a slide big enough to make a Mumma Bear worry.  

Madeline was in heaven the moment we tossed her in the ball pit.  For a long time, she just stood there yelling, "Ball! Ball!  Ball!" at the top of her lungs.  She was too overcome with emotion to do much else.  Eventually, she learned how to sit in the balls, wade in the balls, and finally, bury herself in the balls.  She had...well, a ball.

The only problem with the ball pit was the she insisted on tasting every single urine-and-sweat-covered plastic ball.   Yup, my kid was that kid spreading her germs around for all to share.  At one point, an older boy told her, "You're not supposed to eat the balls!" and then promptly threw a ball at her face.  That was not awesome, but other than that, the other children were lovely.

Eventually, with some help from Mumma and Dada, Madeline discovered the slide.  Luckily, it was one of those tube slides that are impossible to fall off of.  Phew.

She'd enter the top of the slide with a look of complete fear and awe on her face.  But about half way down the tube, she'd start cracking up.

The rest of her time at the playground, Madeline basically ran around the perimeter of the giant gerbil cage  looking for things that were manageable for her to climb on.

Needless to say, operation tucker the baby out was successful.  Madeline slept pretty well last night.