Darcy Goes To Town

Careful, Simi Valley. Darcy's in the house and she is ready to have some fun. On the second night in town, Darcy, Mimi, and I went out to dinner at the ever-kid-friendly Souplantation. Darcy ate her usual hearty meal there, with chickpeas, black olives, peas, radishes, and mac-n-cheese forming the bulk of her meal. After dinner, we walked over to the mall's koi pond where Darcy crawled around the wall to check out the fish from every possible angle. She also lay down on her stomach with her chin propped in her hands to stare at and covet another girl's chocolate ice cream. As if she hadn't just ended her meal with a small bowl of ice cream.

On our way back to the car, we passed a restaurant with a live band playing in its outdoor seating area. Darcy was fascinated and the band noticed her and invited her through the bar to come dance. And dance, she did, to the delight of just about everyone enjoying the beautiful evening on the patio.

The next morning (Monday/yesterday/whatever) brought the first day of nostalgia. Or swimming lessons. I will try to scan one of the pictures Betty found of Michael taking his very first swimming lessons in this exact same pool 29 summers ago. The photos are very similar. Darcy got in pretty easily with her instructor, Chantal. Happiness did not completely last through the whole lesson.

This picture makes it look like Darcy was more or less ok with the kickboard, but that is just an illusion. The kickboard was not the highlight of the lesson. Quite a few "Please may I get outs" reached my ears from the sidelines.

The picking out of a good floatie toy to "swim" after was better. She also enjoyed jumping off the edge of the pool both from sitting and standing positions. And, given her love of ice cream, she loved learning to "make ice cream scoops" in the early stages of learning to doggie paddle. The last five minutes of the lesson was spent in a wading pool, which Darcy liked a lot until she went underground (somehow, this is what she calls going underwater). Then there was some spluttering and tears, but she recovered quickly and her narrative of the lesson for the rest of the day consisted mostly of enthusiastic claims that "I went underground!!" Unfortunately for Chantal, this morning, Darcy has announced that she doesn't want to go underground today.

After her nap, Darcy wanted to go to the pet store. I'm not sure why, but she's been talking about going to the pet store for a few days. I'm sure that few people think of a pet warehouse as a tourist destination, but we were there for almost an hour looking at the animals and playing with the pet toys. Darcy's favorite was the cat towers.

Twenty-four hours of fun, fun, fun!

This week's blog theme, by the way, is "Daddy/Michael/Orville is missing all the fun and has to be kept up to date via the blog". So you can probably expect more frequent posts and lots of pictures. I hope.