Sunday, February 15, 2009

Terror at the McDonald's Playground


Today I took Quen to the indoor playground at McDonald's to keep him out of the house so that Corby and his Dad could work on the new counter tops (more on this later).  When we got there, Quen proceeded to not eat his happy meal,  physically assault a little boy with afro puffs (yeah, i know - a boy -- super cute kid, just a boy with afro puffs) for which he received repeated spankings and "time outs".  He also repeatedly yelled "no" at the same little boy with afro puffs (luckily "afro puff's" mom was very nice) and basically ignore me and everything I asked him to do.  

For those of you who have been to the indoor playground at the McDonald's on Broad River Rd. -- there are 2 slides, one that is easily reachable and not very far off of the ground for the preschoolers and then another enclosed curly one that is about 20 feet high and the only way you can reach the top to slide down is to be tall enough to reach each place you have to climb up.  Quentin was not tall enough no matter how hard he tried to climb up to the tall slide so he stayed down at the bottom on the smaller slide and terrorized anyone within arms length -- that is until he saw another kid climb UP the slide from the inside.  He climbed in and kind of played near the opening, would climb up a little and slide back down.  I never, never would have thought he would have been able to climb ALL the way up the inside of the curly slide, 20 feet in the air.  He was gone for a little while, I was chatting with another Mom, eating some fries until pure shock and paralyzing fear hit me when I heard my son's little voice 20 feet in the air as he yelled for me.  I did not know what to do.  I could not see him due to all of the other tubes and nets and whatnots the kids can climb through and for a while I thought he was still in the slide. I immediately in my mind tried to determine how I was going to squeeze my plus sized body through the little turns and climb ups I would have to get through to get him.  I started to sweat.  Then came Andrew and Savannah -- two friendly little children and very cute siblings, 4 and 6 who told me they would go get him and they did.  He was at the top and having a great time.  I was scared, but I watched the brother and sister deftly fly up through the maze of nets and steps and talk to him.  I heard him talking back to them.  I saw Andrew trying to coax Quen back into the slide and after a little shove and friendly coaxing, Andrew got Quentin back on the slide where he slid back down to me with a huge smile on his face.  I thanked Andrew and breathed much easier.

5 minutes later, he was back up at the top.
(This is not the actual slide, but similar.  He climbed up what would be similar to the yellow slide in the above picture.)

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