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Chuck E. Cheese: a rite of passage
It’s 4:30 in the morning (when I wrote this, posted later) on the day of Baby Bug’s big Pinkkkkity First Birthday Party and I can’t sleep. Why? Because I have 200 pictures in my camera that need to get out and be posted. So many pictures! If I don’t, I know all these memories will just be lost because after the birthday party I’ll probably have 200 more pictures and by then I’ll be too tired to go back and blog about something as old as going to Chuck E Cheese’s on Friday night.
Chuck E. Cheese, remember him? Man, I haven’t been since I was twelve. Not counting that one birthday party I went to for a friend’s kid’s birthday. I didn’t have kids then so it was not the same at all. When you have kids, or you are a kid, Chuck E. Cheese’s is the best place EVER. Well, except the noise and the pizza that you’re worried is not going to be all that great because it was cooked by the same sweaty pimply teenager who was just up on stage teaching all the five year old’s how to Macarena.
Anyway, Chuck E. Cheese did not disappoint. It was a blastola. Baby Bug loved every minute of it. I don’t think she cried once. I thought sure she’d be afraid of the big furry mouse who’s hands move mechanically and maybe his one arm is broken because sometimes it gets stuck in mid air awkwardly. But no, she LOVED the broken Chuckie. She wanted to get up on stage and climb all over his furry feet. “Kkkkkkkkittty,” she says reaching towards him over and over. Silly kid.
My niece, Rapunzel, played skeeball and some other popcorn game all night and scored us a bunch of tickets. Then my sister-in-law, being the experienced mom that she is, divided all the tickets evenly between the three kids. So that meant Baby Bug got to have a prize from the prize counter too. So many prizes! I felt like I was twelve again, forced to do math so I could win something good. We ended up with a soft squishy ball (it was the only really baby proof thing there) and Baby Bug immediately grabbed it and would not let go. She fell asleep in her car seat on the way home, clasping her new ball tightly to her chest.
Isn’t this what being a mom is all about? Taking your kids to Chuck E. Cheese so they can exhaust themselves by having too much fun? It was great. She slept the whole night and didn’t wake up once.
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Painting and a Movie
I think I watch this show too much. I desperately want to be Debbie Travis and paint my house into something fabulous. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible since we rent and on top of that we rent from the crazy landlord. We don’t even want to go there. I don’t care how “cheap” paint is.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t paint cardboard boxes. Painting cardboard is fun. The whole process was a lot easier than I ever expected. I walked into Home Depot, showed them the colors I wanted, waited for ten minutes for them to shake it up and nine dollars later I was out the door with my two shades of pinkkkity pink.
Of course cardboard boxes don’t need any prepping or sanding and you can’t tape anything off anyway. All I had to do was tape down my $1.98 plastic drop cloth to our patio floor to keep it from blowing away and we were off to the painting races. It’s a good thing I watch that show because the paint roller was just the thing. It worked perfectly. I probably wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t watch Debbie Travis every morning with Baby Bug.
The only difficult thing about painting the boxes was entertaining Baby Bug. She got tired of being jailed in her exersaucer after about ten minutes. She wanted to paint too. I let her play with a dry brush but she knew the difference. She kept reaching out for the pink and when I got close she would touch the paint splotches on my arm. Who says she doesn’t like pink? Thankfully I was able to finish it up during her afternoon nap.
And that was that. Now what? Well a movie of course. (1.33 MB Quicktime)
I’ve been meaning to write a post about all the new things Baby Bug is doing. You’ll see she’s found her voice in the movie. She amazes me every day. She’s so smart! I can’t even begin to imagine what year two is going to be like. I feel bad that I’m going to post all about painting cardboard boxes on her birthday and I’m not going on and on about Baby Bug (because believe me I could go on and on…) but it’s late and the heater is broken still and I think my fingers are going to break off if I type any more. So I will save it for yet another few days.
