Adi's grandparents treated her to Chuck e Cheese on our last full day. That place is a responsible parent's nightmare. Adi was an amazingly well behaved toddler in an amazingly over stimulating environment. We explored the toddler section first. It consisted of a two step jungle gym with a small slide, and two mechanical cars that slowly rocked back and forth. Boring for Adi, but she used it to look around at the rest of the place. The first game she played was called jet rider. It was a reclined seat that shimmied and shook as she went over rollercoasters or flew through a city with a jet pack. She rode that game 5 times. She also tried her hand ( with he granddad's help ) at sket ball, punch a duck, fireman rescue, fill a clown's mouth with water, monster truck, and the car that takes your picture with chuck e cheese. She also climbed the big jungle gym with all of the tubes that run across the ceiling. I was a nervous wreck, picturing her getting lost or bullied by older kids, and with me having no way to crawl in and get her. She took two steps in and two boys came tumbling out at the same time nd scared her. She told me "there's peoplei n there". Then she climbed all of the way up and immediately went down the twisty slide. I couldn't stop her from then on, but she did stick to climbing and sliding only. After a while of watching the bigger kids explore, Adi turned away from the slide andventured down the tunnel. I saw her disappear, the immediately come running back crying. She told me that some kid told her no. After I held her for a split second and told her it was alright, she ran right back in. I am proud of her. She's only two but can hold her own and be responsible. Not like the kid, 3 or 4 yrs old, with a gaudy cross bling necklace and rodeo belt buckle the size of his face. That kid was going ballistic and even pushed me, an adult, out of the way. Where was this kid's parents? Your guess is as good as mine. There were several children like him, unsupervised and disrespectful. Only one kid made me laugh then sigh at his level of unparenting. He was Adi's ageor a little younger, and had managed to climb into the basketball shoot and was ripping the balls out as his butt crack hung out of his pants. Later I was this same kid on top of the sket ball machine pulling the ballsout of the back ofthe game and throwing them as hard as he could in whatever direction his tiny hand decided to go.
In the end Adi had a blast, drank two cups of fruit punch, ate half a tiny slice,of pizza, used all of her tokens, and received 15 tickets which bought her two packs of sweet tarts.
In the end I learned never to trust a kid with bling and rodeo belt buckles, and no parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment