Mall Rat

I've always told myself that I would never take Caroline to the mall to play in the "kid zone" playgrounds most malls have. I viewed the playgrounds themselves as dirty and the children within them a bit unsavory for my tastes.
However, I surprised myself yesterday and changed my mind. Paul has been in Las Vegas since Thursday for a bachelor's party and so I've been a "single" mom for four days now. Yesterday, the afternoon loomed ahead of me with no plans and many hours before bedtime, so I decided to give the playground a chance. Off to the mall we went!

When we arrived, Caroline seemed to sense my anxieties about germ-covered equipment and children who were likely to run her over without thinking twice. She stood clinging to my leg for a good ten minutes watching all the action before her. But then she decided to join the mix. She tenatively got down, crawled over to the nearest slide, and before I could arm her with a good shot of hand sanitizer, she motored off after a little boy without so much as a glance back at me!

Caroline proceeded to spend the next 25 minutes crawling from one structure to the next, climbing slides, and clapping at the children running circles around her. She had a blast! And while I spent most of this time nervously watching our stroller, my diaper bag, and Caroline to make sure none of them got spirited off by some shady mall patron, I did manage to snap some pictures.
When I called Paul afterwards to tell him about how much fun Caroline had, his response was, "I hope you sanitized her when you left." Ha! A man after my own heart. :)