It seemed like a good idea at the time. Before that, I took Ethan to the museum and let him run around their "Kid Space" where he enjoyed crawling in tunnels and diving down the slide head-first. He wasn't too keen on the ball pit though. I guess for a one year old, a 14x14 box full of balls can be a little bit scary--- there's balls flying over your head, not to mention you can't see the floor which could give you the notion that if you don't hold on to mommy... the balls will eat you up and you'll be dragged down to the black hole of balls and never come back. Poor Ethan.
After that, Mike met up with us and we collectively decided it would be a fun idea to introduce Ethan to Mr. Cheese (for some reason, I feel weird calling him Chuck..... and is "E" supposed to be his middle initial? I wonder if it stands for Edgar.) If you have never been to Chuck E Cheese, here's the most refined description I could find -- Imagine feeding 1,000 kids a pound of sugar each, a six-pack of coke, and an injection of high grade chocolate. Then, imagine releasing these kids all at once into a tightly-confined maze full of bright, flashing lights and ear-drum shattering noises from which there is no escape. Imagine these kids running from one source of light or noise to another at break neck speed while screaming at the top of their lungs... trampling anyone unfortunate enough to get in their way. Well, if you can imagine that, then multiple that image by a hundred and you get a sense of what it was like for us... On top of that, imagine being there on a Saturday night. What were we thinking????
It took us at least 20 minutes to even find an empty table. But I had no shame in standing next to a family who looked like they were about to leave anyway (you could tell because the dad looked extremely irritated and looked like he was about to lose it. I think the beer didn't help much). I looked around and saw that there were about 5 other moms trying to claim the same spot short of licking the table, but I wasn't about to back down. As soon as the dad stood up, I made eye contact and signalled "Are you leaving?" and when he nodded, I swooped right in. In that environment, I learned very quickly that you won't get anywhere if you're anything less than invasive. And ordering food? Forget about being nice! Whoever got the brilliant idea to have ONE register to ring up the food AND the tokens should be fed to wild bears. If you want to eat, you have to fight with parents who are 2 seconds from going postal if they don't get those tokens to their deliriously screaming kids. By the time I got to the counter, the poor cashier was already in tears. I tried to be as uncomplicated as I could, but with Ethan trying to grab everything on the counter, it was kinda hard to do.
While we waited for what seemed like 3 hours to get our grease-filled pizza, Ethan had a blast on every single ride in the "Toddler" section... particularly the Barney truck which he decided would be fun to ride 5 times in a row. I emphasize "Toddler" because there were times that I got annoyed at some kids who clearly were older than the toddler category, yet they continued to hog the slide and pushed the smaller kids aside. Where are their parents anyway? Probably in some corner, trying to suck down another glass of cold beer. Luckily, Ethan just either waited for his turn or played with something else.
As chaotic as it was...... surprisingly, Ethan didn't look a least bit freaked out. In fact, there were 5 birthday parties going on that night and as soon as they started to sing the birthday song, Ethan stopped in his tracks and started clapping along as if they were singing for him! He does this dance, too, where he bends his knees and sticks his butt out like he's grinding -- VERY funny to watch.
Overall, his birthday weekend went great (hopefully, we didn't traumatize him too bad). We went back to the museum the next day so Mike could enjoy it with Ethan for a bit, but the museum closed early due to "inclement weather" -- which really just meant, it's starting to snow a little bit so let's call it a day, go home and watch the football game.
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