Moonwalks

I have a son who is in love with moonwalks. It's an interesting thing though because he may be obsessed with them, but he has also been afraid of jumping in them. We've gotten him to jump a few times now so I think he likes all aspects of them now, however he can't seem to get enough of them. All summer and fall he talked about moonwalks. One was in our garage for a while after his birthday and he talked about it constantly. We had to go out in the garage and look at it every day about 5 times. When Miriam took it, he was sad for days. If we are at my parent's house, he asks to go out to the building to see the moonwalks. Most of the time he just walks around and looks at them and gets sad if you say it's time to close the door.

Then came the "moonwalk" books. One evening my dad was going through all the brochures he'd picked up at IAAPA, a trade show he goes to every year. He was making a pile of the brochures and books he didn't want on the floor and L fell in love with them. That evening we left with a drawstring bag full of magazines and pamphlets. The next few weeks, L couldn't get enough of the books. He'd look at them for a long time. He quickly found favorites. One is a huge book with tiny pictures of all kinds of moonwalks/obstacle courses/blow up games--some with balls, one is a ball pit one, and another one has little pedal cars/carts. He knows the name of a few he wants "Daisy" is one from the ball pit book and he loves turning to that page. He also likes one of the ones with a football player, some of the slides, and the castles. I finally put them in his closet because I needed to look at something else for a while. That probably led to me reading the "farm book" from start to finish (that's over 300 pages with 30 or so stories) multiple times each week. Then one Sunday my dad said he was putting some books in my car. I didn't question him about them, but he said L would love them. I thought they were going to be actual books. Nope. When I got in my car I saw two huge bags full of "moonwalk" books. We haven't even made it through all of them. Our living room has seen many of them because the bags have been poured out over and over again. That led to him asking about his other moonwalk books and I told them they were in his closet. He drug out that bag again, so we are back to looking at moonwalk books for at least an hour a day.

Here he is with just a few of his pamphlets from the original moonwalk bag (and a Highlights magazine). Yes, pjs can act as clothes if you aren't going anywhere. 

On January 24th, L wanted to read the moonwalk books ALL day. He drug one of the bags into our bedroom while I was changing H’s diaper and wanted to sit on our bed with his legs under the covers and read them. After we started looking at them he wanted to listen to music. I asked him what song he wanted to hear and he said, “moonwalk.” I laughed and said, “I don’t think there is a song that is called that.” He insisted, so I asked Alexa to play “moonwalk” and lo and behold, there’s a song that’s called moonwalk.

He often gets sad when I put the moonwalk books back in the bags so I have to let him know I'm just cleaning them up, which leads him to start singing "Clean up. Clean up." I just can't handle dozens of moonwalk books all over the floor all the time. :)

He's already started saying he wants a moonwalk birthday party and that's 8 months away! You can ask him if he wants a _____ party or a ______ party... insert anything into the blank and he will probably say "no"... UNLESS you insert the word moonwalk into the blank. He did say balls were okay one time but then followed it with "balls...moonwalks" and I laughed because that sounds a lot like his 2 year old party. He knows what he likes. 

I keep seeing my friends post pictures of their kids on these Little Tykes moonwalk (bouncer and slide) and they set it up in their house or in their garage. Hm... I'm wondering if that's going to be something I purchase in the near future. He'd probably live there if it wasn't pretty outside. There seem to be two options in life....moonwalks or outdoors! I'm so glad he's so easy to please. I mean he couldn't live his life without a ball (or 15), a balloon (or 4), and books but if he has those things he is truly set.