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.

He Slimed Me…

If you’re a fan of the movie, Ghostbusters, then you will no doubt remember the scene when Egon and Ray stumble upon Peter Venkman, writhing on the floor in a glistening wet pool of ectoplasm following his first encounter with a real ghost, and uttered those inimitable and prophetic words…

“He slimed me…”

I say, prophetic, because fast forward to today, my official first day as Stay-At-Home Dad after Mumma returned to work today, and as I just finished giving my son his mid-morning bottle of “Chard-o-mamma”, I found myself uttering that exact same phrase.

A few mls short of finishing off the bottle, he turned his face away in the same way you can’t look at the screen whenever Tori Spelling comes on the TV. I asked him if he needed to burp, and as I placed him upright in my lap, it sounded like he’d just released The Kraken.

A split second later, we met the Kraken. In the form of a projectile vomit that awarded him the gold medal at the Exorcist Olympics. And as we sat there, dripping from head to foot, we splutteringly looked at each other in disbelief.

“Oh my god, are you okay? What did you just…”

But before I could finish my sentence, he turned to me straight in the face as if to say,

“In case you missed it the first time…BLUUUUURGH!!”

Gunned down by torpedo number 2, like a rioter blasted by a water cannon.

Our shocked blinking eyes, the only thing visible from beneath a symbiotic pool of dripping ectoplasm. I held my son in outstretched hands and immediately thought of Dr. Venkman.

So, that was my baptism into my first day as a Stay-At-Home Dad. The how and why it happened, I can only surmise that maybe…(just maybe)…he might have drank too much milk, too quickly?

I dunno. Is 2 gallons too much for a 6 month old? It seems just enough to get my car from the garage to the letterbox.

I guess, being a Dad means to expect the unexpected, and anything short of a giant Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man breaking down the house, anything strange in my neighbourhood, I know exactly who I’m gonna call…

Mumma!