Since the temperature has been steadily falling the past few days, I’m trying to find more after-school activities for the girls that allow us to be in a climate controlled environment. Oh, and I don’t want to have to pay for it. Two kids plus an adult at one those inflatable playplaces or Chuck E. Cheese? We’re in a recession people! Plus with all of the fervor over H1N1? I won’t even go into that.
So, how have we been passing the time? We go visit my parents. We meet our friends for lunch and trade playdates at our respective houses. We go to the library. As a matter of fact, we’ve been to the library so many times in the past two weeks, when we went in on Wednesday, Mo and Co just grabbed a cart and started re-shelving some books.
Yesterday, I decided that they needed to run around a little bit, but the wind was biting just a bit too hard. I hate to admit it, but I’ve totally lost my New England edge. The thermometer drops below 65 and I’m breaking out thermal underwear and Perfomance Fleeces. I even went so far as to put two throw blankets in the dryer for 20 minutes and then drape them over the kitchen chairs so that the girls could be wrapped up in that fresh-from-the-dryer-warmth while they had breakfast. My mom once said, “Never start something you don’t plan on doing every single day” (I was a young newlywed at the time, so you can take your pick on activities to which she was referring — wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I had no idea fulfilling a daily request for “warm blankets” would be one of those things.
But as I was saying, the weather has cooled and we’re looking for some things to do. Enter the play area at the mall. Despite the H1N1 pandemonium of late, I took my chances and relied heavily on strength of daily vitamins, slatherings of Purell, and our seasonal flu vaccines. Besides, we haven’t been to the play area in a while. Probably not since that iPhone wielding mom who just watched as her kid face-planted into the floor (ahhh, good times). Our recent trip certainly didn’t disappoint.
First of all, they have since installed these pressurized gates on both of the entrances into the play area. I think it’s to keep the kids in, but it works more to keep people out because every single person that rolled up on those gates wrangled with it for like five minutes before someone inside the play area yelled, “You have to push it! You have to push it!” I saw one frustrated dad look around several times like he was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind the Starbucks and yell, “Dude, we totally go you!” After several ineffective attempts to open the gate, another patience-impaired parent tossed in her kid and her stroller. She then channelled Shawn Johnson and vaulted over it. Her execution score was low, but that was because she bobbled her landing.
We get into the play area and Mo and Co take off, blending into the mix of toddlers and pre–schoolers leaping off of things and sliding down others. I sit back, keeping one eye on my girls and another on the steady influx of moms, dads, and caregivers that begin to populate the place.
One mom comes lurching into the play area, straddling her child’s body as she holds him by the wrists and drags him across the ground. Seriously. She was dragging him. By the wrists. Across the ground. Are you kidding me?! At first I thought maybe he had some kind of paralysis of the legs because — oh yeah, he was being dragged!
He wasn’t crying or yelling or anything. He had this placid look on his face like, “Yeah, this is how I do.” The mom deposited him in front of some equipment like a retriever depositing some slippers in front of their master. She then pulled off his shoes and his coat while he laid face down on the floor. And he just laid there, chillin‘, even as several kids vaulted over him, as they ran laps around the perimeter.
He eventually got up, though I didn’t see where or when because Donatella Versace came in with Dolce by the hand and Gabanna in the stroller. Oh, can I tell you?! Actually, I misspoke. Donatella’s breasts came in first, followed by her lips, and then the rest of her. I mean, it’s Friday afternoon in Norfolk and this broad is wearing painted on jeans, Gucci stiletto boots, and a white tee shirt so tight, her nipples looked at me and whispered, “Help. . .us. . .can’t. . .breathe. . .”
She reached into her BeDazzled Coach bag made of some animal that probably wasn’t on the ark and promptly got on her BeDazzled cell phone. Quelle surprise! Little Dolce in his toddler Ed Hardy Shirt and 7 for all mankind Jeans hopped up on a climber and started yelling, “Mom! Mom! Look at me!” Donatella waved a BeDazzled hand at him and kept on talking. “Mom! Mom! Look at me!” Dolce persisted.
Well, I looked, and do you know this little joker proceeded to dance on top of that climber like he was Michael Jackson on the roof of a car in front of a courthouse! At first I thought he was having a grand mal seizure, what with all his popping and locking, but then when he grabbed his crotch? Oh my.
I cast my eyes around to do a check for Mo and Co and I spotted their respective Afro puffs bobbing up and down in between various children and equipment. And then, in my line of sight strode another woman, dragging a prone child by the wrist across the floor. Again with the wrist?! I suppose that was all she could manage because there was squirming infant trying to launch itself out of her compromised grasp.
Just behind her, a dad had his child by the wrist and ankle and began whirling himself around in a circle. He looked like a mast and the kid looked like an unfurled sail. And the mom?! She was standing off to the side with her hands over her mouth looking aghast. Seriously, lady? Stop that madness (yes, I know, I’m such a hypocrite). I was just waiting for the “pop” and the squeal that comes with dislocated bones. But really? If you are going to do your best Gordeeva and Grinkov impression, the local mall probably isn’t the best place to do it.
After that little display, I figured it was time to give the girls a 5 minute departure warning. When it was time to leave, I was braced for the post-lunch/pre-nap meltdowns. The girls put on their shoes and coats. Co got in the stroller and Mo buckled her in. They got their palms filled with hand sanitizer and rubbed their mitts together as we made it to the car. In record time, we were out of the lot, back to the house and into the bed for naps. And I didn’t even have to drag them by the wrists to do it.
