Jungle Java

I went to “Jungle Java” today with the girls. It is a cross between Starbucks and Chuck E. Cheese’s. A coffee house with a huge play area (the jungle) and places for moms to sit and talk. That is, if your child will let you sit. Emma did not want to stay in the toddler play area. We had gone to meet Liz and her newly adopted 18 month old son, Roman. Roman stayed in the toddler area and Emma would not. I felt bad because I am trying to give Liz some support but had to follow Emma. In an odd turn of events, I met another mom with kids about the same age as mine. I don’t know if there is mom pick-up etiquette, but there were mom pick-up lines. Like, “Do you live nearby?”, and, “Do you come here often?”. Imagine that! So I gave Gaby (mom to Abby, 20 months, and Adam, 5 months) my phone number and we promised to call one another so the kids could play together. So here is my conflict - I came with Liz but hooked up with Gaby. Does that make me a bad play date? Liz left before I did and I tried not to talk to Gaby too much before she left. It was all too weird.

So there were a ton of moms there, just sitting and talking. Sitting! Why couldn’t I be sitting? How did they get to sit? I did not even see kids approach them. I am even a little suspicious that they even had kids. They could be on witness protection programs and be pretending to have kids. Sitting! I wonder if I will get to a point where my kids can run off into the ‘jungle’ and I can sit and drink some fancy hot drink. For today I climbed through the big kid’s play structure with Emma and went down the slide while holding Mary and Emma at the same time. Mary found Jungle Java exhilarating, Emma found it liberating, and I found it noisy and exhausting. But I did pick-up another play date.