Rainy Day Play

Monday, April 20, 2009

Ro began his second week of vacation climbing the walls of the apartment...literally. Although city living spoils us with parks, shopping, restaurants, beaches, and school all within easy walking distance, Sherry really misses her big yard back home, and the carport that she could send Ro outside to play under when it's raining. Apparently we weren't the only parents with the same rainy-day idea; as we pulled up to Lollipop's Playland & Cafe there was only street parking left. The place is part of a chain of children's indoor playgrounds that caters to birthday parties and desperate parents looking to burn some energy out of their kids. They have an onsite cafe so the parents can sit around and drink coffee while the kids tire themselves out.

Ro taking it all in

Ro was like a pig in sunshine, giddy almost to the point of being overwhelmed. The playland was enormous, with four different slides, a ball crawl, a bounce house, a flying fox, and more crawl-through plastic tubes than we could count. Those things are really hard on adult knees as we discovered! And the slightly greasy mystery film that seemed to coat the inside of the tubes left us wondering just how much kid slobber could accumulate on them before the staff cleaned them.

Making ball-angels

There was even a merry-go-round that they would operate for a few runs about every hour. When they would make the announcement over the loudspeaker, all the kids would drop whatever they were doing and run to make a queue outside the gate to the thing. Ro was in the third group to go, and was second in line; he let Mark know that he was going to go for the sporty red 4-wheeler when it was his turn. Of course, he shouldn't have tipped his hand, because the boy in front of him went straight for it when it was their turn. Dejected, Ro moped and walked back to the gate, missing out on the other "cool" ride-on, a blue dune buggy. All that was left was black horses and baby-sized blue dolphins. With some encouragement, he mounted the last remaining black horse, but he was definitely NOT happy about it, and sulked the entire ride, staring daggers at the boy riding the red 4-wheeler the whole time. Needless to say, he was not going to be disappointed the next time. The next chance he had to ride, he was near the back of the group, so he shrewdly let people go in front of him so as to be at the front of the next group. Another boy cut in line in front of him, though, so Ro was still second in line. Mark stood back to watch what would go down from a safe (and anonymous) distance. Ro kept his cool and didn't say anything, but as soon as the gate started opening, Ro ducked around the other boy, the exiting riders, and the ride operator like Barry Sanders weaving through a defense and sprinted as hard as he could for the 4-wheeler, beating out the other boy, jumping on the vehicle the millisecond the previous rider vacated it...lol.

The only sad kid we've ever seen on a merry-go-round

Weeeeeee!

After spending a few hours at Lollipop's, Ro was getting tired (Woo-Hoo!), so we headed home to eat an early dinner. Afterwards, we walked down the block to the movie theater and saw Race to Witch Mountain. For those of you old enough to remember the 1970's version, it's the same basic plot, but instead of a suspenseful child's sci-fi flick, Disney turned it into an alien shoot-em-up starring The Rock. It was actually not as bad as we thought it was going to be, and Mark gave it props for the Steve McQueen references, but high art it wasn't.