Camp WannaEatAMallow and other toddler adventures

We recently discovered the children’s show Oswald, about an animated blue octopus named Oswald (voiced by Fred Savage from The Wonder Years), Oswald’s hot dog shaped dog Weenie and his various friends (a penguin, a snowman and a flower among others). It sounds sort of trippy but the show is actually incredibly mellow and sweet and endearing and all three of us are completely in love with it and the random little life lessons it shares. Sadly, Nick Jr. cancelled the series, presumably in favor of things like Dora (blerg), but you can still download it from the iTunes store.

Anyway, we recently watched an episode where Oswald and his friends try to go camping but it starts to rain so they set up their tent in Oswald’s living room. Then sit in there with a flashlight singing songs and eating marshmallows. Naturally, we had to replicate the scene for ourselves.

So, picture Lillian and I squeezed into this tiny tent, singing songs and stuffing our faces with marshmallows. It was totally sweet and amazing, if slightly sticky, and I am grateful and amazed that this little person is suddenly capable of imaginary play and the singing of songs and other major feats of humaness.

In fact, before our “camping trip” we’d spent a solid twenty minutes playing a game. Like a real live game. Sort of. We have a children’s game called Jonathan Adler Matchy Matchy (its basically a hipster rip-off of Milton Bradley’s Memory). Perhaps we should call our version Modified Matchy. Lilly isn’t quite ready to turn the cards facedown and find the matches blind but we had a great time staring at the cards face-up and picking out the matches. She “won” almost without cheating.

Point is, last night reminded me of how amazing toddlers can be. They get a bad rap. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to tarnish the toddler good name like every other parent in the universe, but they really are lovable.

So when I dropped her off at school and for the third time in as many trips, she burst into tears and clung to my leg (something that, previous to this latest round of super-cling, she hasn’t done in months) I tried not to despair too much. It also helped that when one of my neighborhood besties dropped her daughter off at school mere 10 minutes later, she helpfully documented Lillian’s complete, total and utter recovery from the abandonment trauma. Toddlers.