A blog post from Jason
As some of you may already be presently aware of, my grammar sucks. Also, it was Nicholas’s second zeroth birthday last weekend. We would have posted earlier, but there was one mitigating circumstance: the Chuck E. Cheese Experience. After much deliberation, Candice and I decided that including that fiasco in the recap would give the rest of the post an “Aside from that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?” feel. Candice is currently writing the proverbial strongly worded letter for Mr. Charleston Cheese himself, which I think she should share with the world in a separate post. I’m sure it will make great use of the phrase “opportunity for improvement”.
Meanwhile, ignoring the rat’s management, Nico’s birthday was stupendous! We took the trip to Matteson to stay the night at Mama Solomon’s. I was admittedly very cranky, but the family and the many houseguests were kind enough to allow me a long nap Friday evening and to sleep in very late on Saturday. It was the best sleep I ever had on a couch.
Candice dropped me and Nicholas off at Chuck E. Cheese, and went to Sam’s to pick up some cupcakes. Nicholas and I went inside, and met Vicki, Erich, and Ben. We checked in and got our table, and Nicholas stood in awe of the mechanical animatronic band of strange things in front of him. After a few minutes, he tugged on my leg and said “Daddy, what’s going on here?”
I fought the urge to say “I could ask you the same thing”, and just straightforwardly explained to him that this was a concert, and there was a band, and they were playing music. He hesitated a moment, then said “But that’s a dog! And that’s a bird! And that’s a mouse! And that’s a purple monster!” Correct on all accounts, Nicholas, those guys have no business playing musical instruments. But we accept that, because we’ve seen stranger things from Mickey Mouse and his friends — although these guys weren’t playing Oompah music, they were playing Cyndi Lauper. The strange thing is, there was this human, Italian stereotype, animatronic dude in the corner, and he was by a wide margin the creepiest among them. I didn’t go anywhere near that corner the entire afternoon.
As we waited for the food to come out, Nicholas, Ben (4 years old), Mia (5), Jaynce (3), and I headed toward the gaming area. I don’t think Ben wanted to hang out with Mia as much as she wanted to hang out with him, and he quickly tried to separate. Mia spent the next five minutes telling me that she didn’t know where Ben went, while Jaynce and Nicholas were distracted by the game that didn’t work. I sat them both up on the seat, and let them fight over the steering wheel and buttons. They seemed to have a lot of fun.
Nicholas then made his way to an actual game, one where you aim a water gun at a target and try to fill the balloon before the person next to you. This is where we ran into our first ticket nymph; the kid that lurks behind you, and rips your tickets out of the slot just before you finish your game. Nicholas and I didn’t really care. He doesn’t understand the concept of tickets as currency, and I don’t care about buying crap. We have a dollar store just a few blocks away from home, after all.
Right next to the water pistol game was the entrance to the big honking playground tube thing. This piece of crap reached up to the ceiling, and was supported by three inch PVC pipe. I was initially very skeptical about the structural support, but then I saw a 250 pound guy dive into it after a wayward toddler, and scale the entire structure. It shook like mad, but it held. I was pretty impressed.
Nico got into the structure innocently enough, but after you get more than a level up, it’s really difficult to keep track of where the kids go. He ended up coming down a slide with big tears in his eyes, which reminded me of the time I went down a twisty slide at the park feet first, and came out head first. I hadn’t been on a twisty slide since then, until Nicholas insisted we go done one at the park last summer. I wonder if he’ll want to go on that same twisty slide this summer, after his Chuck E. Cheese experience.
Looking back at it, with all the vomit that we saw on the carpet as we were loading up the car to leave, I can only imagine the horrors that lurked up there in the two-foot tubing in the sky. It’s something I try not to think about as I go to sleep at night, but it always creeps in there, and I wake up in a cold sweat.
Rest assured, Nico recovered nicely. We headed back to our table, and the pizza was there. Despite its low quality, I managed to choke down four slices of various types. I had been on a 24 hour fast previously. That could have been timed better. I’m paying for it now.
Now here’s something else you need to know about Chuck E. Cheese: they hand out small cups, the kind you would expect 4 year olds to be drinking out of, for tokens. Those cups have holes in the bottom. You should not pour fruit punch into these cups, because, predictably, the liquid will flow through the holes in the bottom and wind up on the table. This is a fundamental law of physics, and I, and engineer by training, had to learn it the hard way.
Once every 90 minutes or so, they have some poor high school kid come out in a rat suit and lead a program honoring all the birthday kids. The waitresses try to put a crown on the kids’ heads, which Nicholas promptly refused. Then, our waitress tried to just take him by the hand and lead him up to the stage. Nicholas responded exactly as I taught him: “I DON’T KNOW YOU! THAT’S MY PURSE!” And then he kicked her in the nuts.
Well, not really. But he didn’t go with her, and Rashida had to bring him to the front. Once there, he saw Chuck E. Cheese. Here was the moment of truth. Candice and I were afraid he’d get scared and run off, like when I saw Mickey Mouse at Disney World when I was 4. Nicholas had the other predictable toddler reaction. “RATATOUILLE!” he shouted, and ran right up to the guy, and smacked him in the crotch. It was definitely the highlight of the evening.
As David, Uncle Rick, and I were exiting the building with all Nicholas’s stuff, we passed by an emergency exit that wasn’t wired up, and some coat racks. David said “Oh, there are coat racks! I wish I would have known that!” I wasn’t able to reply at the time, but the proper answer is NO!!! There’s a reason that there’s a whole row of coat hooks there, and the place is packed to the gills with people, and there are no coats on that rack! There are some places where the culture is, if you leave it unguarded, you left it. If you put your coat down, then you’re expecting someone to empty the pockets or take the coat. It’s what you git for not taking care of your sh*t. It’s easy to know when you’re definitely in one of these areas; the emergency exits have the wiring torn out.
We ended up leaving before Nicholas got a chance to open his many, many presents. I felt bad for Ben, because he really wanted to see Nicholas open the gift he gave him. Rest assured Ben, Nico really loved the cars, and he’s been playing with them a lot since Saturday! Today, in fact, we had ourselves a Big Race Around. The white car won, but it fought off a feisty performance by the red and blue cars, and the orange car declined to participate.
Now, if you got Nicholas a present, and he hasn’t played with it yet, don’t feel bad. He’s only got so much attention to go around, and he’s bound to change preferences as time passes. He always likes books, but only at certain times, and he tends to prefer the familiar ones (don’t we all?). We introduced him to radio controlled cars tonight, which might change his opinion of other cars. It might make them more interesting, we’ll see. There are even a couple of presents we haven’t let him open yet, because he has the same toys at school, and we know those will dominate his attention. He was afraid yesterday that the fire truck was broken (he wasn’t moving it, and it wasn’t talking), and he’s needed some help getting the tractor to latch up to the trailer.
Oh, and the clothes are great. Probably, I dunno.
All in all, it was a very happy birthday. Next year, we won’t be at Chuck E. Cheese. Maybe we’ll go (Wii) bowling.