It's still 19 days away, but winter is setting in already. The early darkness is depressing enough without an active toddler who yearns to be out of doors until dinner time. What's a mother to do when her girl wakes up from a nap around 3:30 and the sun starts going down just after 4?
Well, there's the play area at the Queens Mall, as well as the two-story H&M there with the central staircase and the huge purse/accessories section (Malanga Baby loves her accessories). There's the occasional playdate, but it's so hard to plan around different toddlers' afternoon nap schedules. And, there's hanging out at the playground way past the point that the fluorescent lights come on. This last one can feel kind of mystical as the orange light shines off of the slide, but it's hard to stay outside when the temperature suddenly makes a very noticeable dip from one minute to the next.
Enter our evening soccer class! It's called "Superkickers" and it's the most fun I can find for Malanga Baby from 5:30-6pm. She gets to sing songs, run around a gym and do Karate-Kid-like exercises (you know, the kind that build all the muscles required by soccer but don't necessarily seem related to soccer at first) with kids from all over the neighborhood. She even gets covered in stickers at the end of every class. Now, if we could just get her to pay attention to the Brazilian soccer teachers instead of running around to her own beat, then I could tell you if I have a future futbolista on our hands or not.
"Papos" is Malanga Baby's new word for shoes, it's short for zapatos. After months of this Malanga Mama enduring nothing but the sounds of English-language words (hi, bye, puppy, baby), I finally heard the sweet sound of "agua" a few weeks ago. Now so many more variations of Spanish words are following. I love it!
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