Socialist Euro-Style Free Daycare in America: Just go to IKEA!

There are days when you go shopping in a strip mall near an airport, buy absolutely nothing, and call it time well spent.

Even though I spent the entirety of Saturday by myself (I did Mom's Day a day early), Sunday proved that I needed more time out from Crabtot. We'd gone out en famille in search of a washer-dryer. Crabtot had half-spun and half-sobbed in her car-seat for the duration of the car trip out to the delightful strip mall that houses Best Buy. I'd thought that, unlike her parents, she'd quite enjoy an examination of front and top-loading washer-dryers for her Sunday outing; after all, these are the things that kids get sort of tickled over, right? But she grew quickly bored and threw herself up and down the aisles, complaining and demanding strawberries and such.

After a spell, Crabhubby and I looked at each other over the Maytags and Whirlpools. "IKEA," I said. "It's a good day for IKEA."

And he said, "Let's go."

Some of you may be confused. Why add a cavernous self-serve homewares depot to an already overburdened family shopping trip? But you are merely the uninitiated or foreigners in an inhumane country that does not offer the splendor of a Scando-warehouse called IKEA. Which is oh so very much more than merely half-cooked cheap furnishings made by people with names like Gunnar Bjirkelund (no doubt the pseudonym of one Jeffrey Weiner of Brooklyn? ...Does IKEA give you Swedish avatars when they hire you, I wonder?) Back to the point, Until moving to Crabcity I had lived a half-life, without IKEA. But Crabcity is more civilized. And the chief sign of that is the presence of IKEA. With its free childcare. That's right, Crabtown friends: free.

When we first spotted IKEA's free childcare room, "Småland," we thought we might be seeing things. Crabtot smashed her nose to the glass in wonder, as children frolicked inside a giant clog. Yes, a giant clog. Which sounds a tad absurd now, but when you are at IKEA it just makes sense, like lingonberries with Swedish meatballs.

For those sadly in the dark, Småland is a "magical forest" where children play like bunny rabbits while their parents argue over whether to get the Malm series of bureau or the Snordgegrone (okay, I made up the last). Småland is where forest fairies bewitch each other inside IKEA children's room products while Mom tries to convince Dad that there's nothing wrong with a $1 towel, and Dad tries to convince Mom that there's nothing wrong with a bedroom that consists entirely of birch-veneered furniture. When did Småland come to be? I don't recall ever seeing it in other IKEAs that I have visited. Mind you, I haven't been to an IKEA in years and back when I last trotted through a Nordic habitat in search of a futon cover or lava lamp or whatever-all I bought in those carefree days, I wasn't even thinking about having children, much less thinking about how to palm them off on others.

"Yay, Small Land!" Crabtot said when we dropped her off, signing a perfunctory info sheet, and attaching an ID sticker to her back. Then we thrust her through a trapdoor that led to that Magic Forest and we bailed...past the Marketplace (where you get big furnishings), through the habitats (where tranquil modern living is simulated in an otherwise tense environment of beleaguered families making what appear to be major life decisions), and made straight for the restaurant. Which basically just rocks. Except that the strudel is frozen. "What time is it?" I asked Crabhub. "Check your phone." You see, at Småland you get only one hour of childcare. Then they buzz you with a pager.

The first time Crabhubby and I did the IKEA date, we felt very pleased with ourselves. Drinking $1 coffee out of china cups, stashed in a pleasing booth beside paper screens stretched with Marimekko-ripoff fabric, we looked out the windows and sipped on freedom. The view was gorgeous. Okay, so the view is basically just the back of the strip mall with the airport parking lot nearby but when you've got one hour of child-free time on the weekend, all childless views are good views.

Our most recent IKEA date was a touch more fraught. We'd just prior to the outing drunk fifty barrels of coffee and so decided to nix sitting and sipping for some random shopping. Except there was nothing we could think of buying. "Napkins," I said firmly to Crabhubby when he expressed reservations over the whole thing and posited that we nix IKEA altogether and go home to clean the house. "I need napkins. And a small white frame."

"Pity they don't let you leave for an hour," Crabhub said. We peered across the strip mall wondering if we'd get caught if we made a break for it and hit the grass island strips adjacent to the cars, to loll upon the lawn and take a nap. Yes, unfortunately there is one major rule of Småland and it's for parents: no leaving the premises. I wondered if my pager would work if we spent the hour upon the grassy knoll near the edge of the IKEA parking lot. But in the end, I'm not a rebel. I can't break laws. The closest I've ever been to law-breaking was an attempt at bathroom graffiti in grad school. With a Pilot Varsity fountain pen that wrote in turquoise ink. (I was getting my Master's in Writing people. Leave me alone.) So it was napkins over naps on strip-mall lawns. We really did need napkins.

But napkin-shopping just isn't the whale of a time it should be when your bloody Småland pager keeps vibrating in your pocket.

Now, first, a word about the IKEA childminders. If you want me to tell you they look perfectly wonderful and beautifully trained and wildly knowledgeable about children, I will. Because to me any warm body looks to be that way of a Sunday afternoon when one's preschooler is preschooling all over you. That said, the grownups in the Magic Forest have more of a desultory look, more of a teenage look, more of a low-slung pants, dyed hair, ipod's-on-shuffle sort of look. They say only two things to you when you drop your child off. "Is she potty trained?" and "Is she over 34" tall?" And you say yes and yes and then stuff her through a trapdoor and Bob's your uncle. Which is why you might actually get a tad nervous when the pager goes off prematurely. Maybe the tot got hurt?! Maybe some bloody bruiser of a boy mashed her delicate leg in the clog?

So Crabmommy sprinted for that Magic Forest. Not so easy to find at IKEA. You're going against the stream, working backwards through habitats: bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, office, patio...When I get to the Forest my eyes roam frantically for a small creature with a puff of uncombed hair and unmatching socks, quite possibly crying or injured near a giant clog. But Crabtot's happy, up a magical woodland climbing wall, oblivious. "Sorry," one of the teens says. 'The pager's just malfunctioning." She gives me a new one.

I race back to Crabhubby. Patio, office, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Mostly we've been wandering without purpose or enjoyment. And now I can't find him. And now I have only forty minutes left.

"What about this for the living room?" he asks when I capture him beneath a pallet of wool rugs designed by Sigrid Olafsen and made by children in Guam. We discuss the rug. For about thirty minutes. Oh, how we can discuss a rug! And just when we've reached an agreement on the tone and weave and quality of rug, the pager jiggles again. Off I go. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, office, patio. Småland. And I see Crabtot, or rather just her hair. She is DROWNING IN A SEA OF PLASTIC BALLS. "Excuse me!" I say to the teen up front as I point wildly at the ball pit from behind glass (parents can't go into Småland). "I don't think my child can breathe!!" But the teen just smiles as Crabtot stands up and I see the ocean of plastic balls is only about twelve inches deep. To be sure, my child was quite fine, but my pager was not.

"Again?" The teen rolls her eyes. "Sor-ree!" she says to me and hands me another, snapping her gum.

"I can't get much shopping done this way," I say, all huffy, as though I'd come to IKEA to actually shop.

"I'll give you another half-hour then," she says. Score!

Patio, office, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Rugs. Crabhusband and I discuss and rationalize the rug for the remainder of the Småland time. This activity is perhaps not quite as peachy-fun as some things (especially since we ended up not buying the rug, or napkins for that matter). Then again, there are other Sunday experiences that make arguing over a rug at a mall on an off-ramp near the airport as bloody fantastic as sharing a pot of Beluga caviar with Javier Bardem.
And so after coming all the way out to a strip mall near the airport of a Sunday, we left Best Buy with no washer/dryer and then we left IKEA empty-handed too. But at IKEA at least, we'd got what we came for. To be empty-handed: that's what we'd really wanted.

Anyone else been to Småland? I think we might go back this weekend. It really is a total all around family win-win-win activity. Or win-times-18 if you're those fundamentalist idiots who are about to have an eighteenth baby.

More giveaways of smashing toddler loveliness right here this Thursday. And Cookie sees new posts twice this week as ever, something about donuts and then Astromommy returns (plug, plug, what-eva, mon)...