Ack! There's a Mouse in My House!

We were invited to our first Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. Daniel was over the moon yesterday! I had recollections of ol' Chuck from when I was a kid, but hadn't considered him for the two-year-old crowd. Boy was I wrong.

There were video games that were more suited to the older kids, but there was also a climbing structure and arcade games of all kinds. Daniel was drawn to the barnyard ones that had eggs rolling down a chute, and if you dumped the bucket just right you scored points. Another had ping pong ball "bees" that you caught in a net and dumped into the honeypot and you earned points for how many... all of these arcade games earned you tickets that could be cashed in for prizes at the end. There were kiddie rides of every stripe, Bob the Builder and the Teletubbies among others. I almost didn't need the pocketful of tokens because by the time I started something up Daniel was noticing some other ride or doo-dad and he was off and running again.

The tables for pizza and cake sat near the stage that had an animatronic Chuck and his cohorts up there playing instruments and singing. This fascinated Daniel to no end, and even when I dragged him out of there he was chattering about "Doggie guitar" and "Song!"

The festivities ran through nap time though, which led to an overtired and somewhat cranky toddler. He was struggling to keep his eyes open and pretty much zonked on his father's shoulder in time for bed. By that time I was wishing for open space on the other shoulder as it was a day of Mama running to keep up.

As we were getting ready to go out this morning, I had to convince Daniel that no, we weren't going to see Chuck E. today... Uh oh.