My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard: Ted's Bulletin (and another playseum visit)

We recently decided to take a second trip to the Cap Hill Playseum location and wanted to go a little earlier in the day this time -- if we were going to pay $6, we wanted our money's worth.  We showed up a little after 9 as the website said it opened at 9.  Unfortunately it opened at 10.  But we sat outside at the little bistro tables and ate our snack (along with another very timely family).  When they arrived to open up shop, they told us that they were having a professional photographer there that day taking pics for the website.  And, if our moms were willing to sign a release, our mugs just might show up there.  After an overly thorough back and forth with the photographer, mom finally signed the freakin' thing.  And Cam and I proceeded to ham it up for the next two hours.  Two hours.  When is the last time we did ANYTHING for two whole hours?  Let's just say when the Certifikid deal came around recently, mom snagged those puppies up.

After playtime we went back to Ted's Bulletin for some grub, which we had scoped out during our pre-10 a.m. wait.  OMG.  This was the real highlight of our trip.  Despite the fact that we both threw serious s*it shows for the first 10 minutes and caused the entire family at the next table to gawk in horror and pity at mom (seriously, the three moms of grown children literally hugged her as they left and said "wow. you must really need to get out of the house."), all was good when they delivered our vanilla milkshake (they even let us split one).  And mom's "The Rachel" sandwhich.  And my healthy "funny face" pancake -- you can get breakfast ANY TIME of the day and they have a great kids menu.  Plus the black and white movies on the wall enthralled Cami (at least long enough for mom to eat 1/4 of her sandwich, which is literally all she could eat).  I'm sure this is a favorite joint with the locals (it was packed), but we will gladly haul ourselves back to the row for some more of Ted's.  If you make a trip to the Playseum, make sure to stop in at Ted's after (just a few doors down).  It was even worth the parking ticket we got for extending our stay.

"So, this book is really really old."

whip cream and sprinkles, baby.

oh no Mr. Bacon, turn that frown upside down.

But Outside It's Stopped Raining: Playseum Cap Hill

[A preliminary side note -- no, you aren't losing it.  we do have a new 'do.  mom has been restyling all of us in preparation for winter and that includes our blog.]

We've been wary of hitting up the relatively new D.C. location of the Playseum simply because our trip to the Bethesda site did not score highly on anyone's scale (including cleanliness, accessibility, level of which it wore our a**es out).  But since Kane has started his recent regimen of crescendo night waking (starts out every 3 hours and works his way up to every 20 minutes around 4 a.m.), mom has decided that his afternoon naptime must decrease (but not cease.  she won't go there yet) and late afternoon activity must increase.  Plus it was raining.  So we hauled ourselves down to Capitol Hill (it's right off of 395, not a bad drive at all.  but, it was raining.  and this is D.C.) to check out the Playseum, which is having its last few days of $4 after 4 p.m. (currently only running for the month of October).  We got there with just 45 minutes left to play, but we made the most of it.  Plus it was almost empty -- only two other little girls were there.  So we basically had our run of the place.  This location is MUCH bigger, citified (includes a China Town and a courtroom), and has a "pirate ship" -- it's really just a bunch of little sandboxes in a room made to look like a pirate ship, but it did the trick for Kane.  And Kane got to use a nifty apple thingamabober (like this one) to peel, core and slice an apple.  Once the nice lady from the Playseum realized we weren't going to actually eat the apple, she let us feed it to the BUNNY RABBITS!  That was a real hit.  Also high on the list was the musical instruments for Kane and the kayak for me.  I don't know if this is something we'd do all that often (mom still thinks it could be claustrophobic with more kids in there), but we'd likely go back late afternoon to the Cap Hill outfit.

We are also much more likely to go back because there is a Matchbox a few doors down, which mom braved with us by herself for din.  Back in the day, mommy and daddy were frequenters of the China Town location because the sliders covered in onion straws are out of this world.  Unfortunately, so I was I by the point the sliders made it to our table.  I refused to eat anything.  In fact I refused to do anything other than wield my knife and practice my two new words "no" and "move."  Kane took to them like a champ, however, and had three before mom decided we needed to leave to avoid a major disaster.  It started out fun, though.  It had stopped raining and we sat outside, the waiter brought us pizza dough to play with, and I perfected my mad Miss America wave at all the peeps passing by.

We threw a b-day party for this monkey I jacked from the pirate ship.

giddy up.

I went all Townshend on that axe.

mom, we want a kayak.

no, seriously.  here i am using my new vocab skill of combining the words "no," "move," and "arggg."

Kane creepin'