crib mattress and new toy

we've recently added a new "toy" to our living room. an old crib mattress.
it's a mattress that was on it's way out the door, but we left it in the living room overnight with the intent of taking it out in the morning. and that morning, the kids saw it and it's been a hit ever since. i think it's been about 3 weeks and unfortunately it hasn't lost its appeal. it's a trampoline, a baby bed, a lego building space, a slide, or just a place to sit. you can see greta sitting on it in the photo. (notice otto lining up the "gabba guys" in the background).

the game greta's playing is a christmas gift from meredith (thanks mer!). it's a memory game and it's so fun. greta loves it and is pretty good at it.

kitchen

so i guess the kids do play with a few toys. they also like to constantly play kitchen.
for the record, most of their playing consists of the following things: cover up (see previous post), playing babies (see previous post), legos, kitchen, or "gabba guys" (where they divvy up the little yo gabba gabba figures and lay them out or line them up). sometimes these games morph into one big game, like when they decide to make food for the gabba guys and then cover them up.

here's otto hard at work in the kitchen. mostly he likes to "make oatmeal" and wear the oven mitts.

cover up

joe and i constantly joke about why we even bother buying toys for our kids. one of greta and otto's latest games is called "cover up". this game involves, you guessed it, covering up with a blanket like you are going to sleep. sometimes they call this "play babies", where they either cover up a baby doll or one of them pretends to be a baby (covered up of course) while the other one reads them a book and puts them to bed. all the toys and they're playing with two blankets. but to their credit, it's neat to see what they come up with. and they play this pretty well together.....

otto loves his sister

sibling love in this video. i particularly love the face caress. :)

florence, ya'll!

greta had the day off school today for MLK day, so we decided to head to the florence mall to play at their playland. and get an auntie anne's pretzel. we've been to this playland before. and while it's fun, it was pretty run-down and not kept very clean. but i weighed all our options for the day and decided this was the best one. it was the only one that included a pretzel.
but boy were we surprised when we saw that the playland had been re-done!! all new equipment, new carpets, new benches, etc etc! it's great! most of the things to climb on or slide on are northern kentucky related (see florence water tower/slide for evidence). the kids had a blast. greta loved climbing up on all the things, and otto found the oldest boy and girl in the place and got involved in their game of chase. i didn't get any good pictures because both kids were moving so fast that they were a blur in almost all the photos.
and the pretzel was delicious.

blocks

refining her skills

greta has been writing her name more. here is her latest version.....