U-me

Courtesy of the parents club to which we belong, today Sava had another treat: a free visit to a place called U-me, which advertises itself as the "largest playspace" in the Peninsula. It doesn't come close to the size of the behemoth Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, which we frequent on rainy days, but it did provide plenty of entertainment for the almost two hours that we spent there. It's the sort of place that probably is pretty unique to coastal places like the Bay Area, where the combination of affluent working parents and children of whom these parents expect only the very best caters to a monster industry of institutions devoted to "child development." Even when "play" is the putative rationale for their existence, play is never just play at a place like U-me; it is a stepping stone to greatness (aka Harvard & co.) based on the advertised belief that play contributes to intellectual, social, and emotional development. While we happen to believe that play is what children should do until they are at least five or six, we are not convinced that annual membership at a place like U-me ($990/year for 2 children!) is a necessity. In fact, we are sure that it's not. If that's how much a room full of artificial toys and play structures costs, national, county, and state parks should be charging a lot more for the infinitely more valuable "education" they provide.
That said, Sava had a blast at U-me today. He ran like a maniac in their version of "the little gym," shopped in a pretend market and cooked in a pretend kitchen, and went down a huge wooden slide. He especially enjoyed a make-belief boat where he made friends with another little boy, Gavin, whose level of silliness and pitch of voice seemed to equal Sava's (someone asked us if they attend school together since they were having so much fun); I love their delighted faces in this picture, and if photos captured sounds, there'd be a lot of breathless laughter right here--