Working Out “Indy-Gym”

Space: the final frontier (how apparent that we’re quickly running out of it). These are the voyages of the commando crawling, Indy-prise. His 8 month mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before…

Gymbaroo!!

(Not to be confused with the Boy Scout’s gigantic week long Jamboree, nor a 3 day festival of Jim Carrey and Jim Belushi films, Jimbaroo – and if there is such a thing…god help us all).

It is in fact, the biggest playmat exercise adventure experience (the size of a basketball court), that Indy has ever seen AND…a heralded saviour and answer to my prayers when wondering how many times can our little bloke circle the couch on his belly, play with the same plastic blocks day after day, figure out my tax receipts and change the oil in my car…all without getting bored?

And now that Indy’s unquenchable thirst for investigating has hit an all-time high (he’s a nosey little bugger), I feel like Roy Scheider in Jaws…

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Gymbaroo to the rescue. From the minute we walked in and was presented with the plethora of climbing, jumping, rolling and textural equipment…Indy went bananas! Like Charlie Sheen and tiger blood, there’s just no stopping him. Crawling around, singing songs, playing games, learning and having fun all at the same time (flashbacks to his conception), it’s so great to see our boy grow in confidence and tackle more challenging apparatus’ (apperati?), week after week.

And the great part for daddy is that, with all the excitement and stimulation, our little boy is plum tuckered out by the time we get home. Which means I get a few spare moments to myself during the day for important things, like figuring out just how he did change the oil in my car in the first place. And he’d better not have adjusted the seat, it took me ages to get it just right.

Road Trip

Packing the car for Indy’s very first road trip to visit my family in the country, I’m struck by an astonishing realization.

How is it that someone so small requires so many things? We used to have only one suitcase in the back of the boot, but now, there’s a pram, two bassinets, nappy bags, blankets, car seats, clothes, spare clothes and did I mention…more clothes?

You quickly learn that babies require a bigger wardrobe change than Lady Gaga. Not because of artistic choices due to their imagination, but by necessity, due to the amount of baby-chuck that tends to spontaneously adorn their freshly changed clean clothes, like a random Pro Hart painting or a hapless Spiderman victim.

And if you remember the scene in Ridley Scott’s Aliens, when Lance Henriksen’s android character Bishop, gets ripped in half by the Queen Alien and sprays milky white residue all over the loading dock, then you’re somewhere in the ballpark.

But loading all these things into the car, it’s very quickly apparent that things will never be the same again. No more can we get out of the house in five minutes. Never again can we slip away for a weekend without loading the car like we’re storing nuts for Armageddon.

As I stare disbelievingly into the depths of our open boot, things are painfully obvious…

We’re gonna need a bigger boat…

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