Sharp Elbows

On Sunday I took little bug to a birthday party for a friend's little girl who was turning three. The party was at one of those incredible "activity centers" designed to wear kids out. Since it was a party for a three year old, little bug was the youngest by a few months, so I wasn't sure how she'd react to the insanity of "big kids" running around screaming and knocking each other down.

Turns out, little bug is a tough one, and I wound up picking up three year olds that she had knocked out of her way.

The activity center had a trampoline floor, a foam block pit, slides, bouncy house and then they set up an obstacle course. Little bug jumped around on the trampoline and took some serious spills, but got herself back up like nothing happened. She even used the big kids as a handle to pull herself up. When I tried to get close to her to act as a spotter, she'd look at me and put her hand out and said "no mommy", like I was Swiper the Fox. Apparently I was embarrassing her. Which was fine by me, because it gave me time to catch up with my friends while the other parents I didn't know whispered about what a bad mom I was letting my baby get roughed up.

Of course, this is where the benefit of having a kid that looks nothing like you comes in. You can just point in the general direction of the kids when someone asks which one yours is, and they'll assume it is the blonde one. Not the black haired one making the boy cry in the corner.

At one point, they broke the kids into two groups. Destructo team one and terror team two - or something like that. So little bug decided to get in the single file line as if she was a big kid. An obstacle course was set up where the kids had to climb through tunnels and over bridges, down a slide, through cones, etc. The first obstacle was really tall to climb over, so little bug was a little stuck (yelling "no mommy" when I got within a five-foot radius), so I decided to let her work it out on her own. Until I saw that she was starting to get lapped. And the big kids were treating little bug like she was part of the obstacle course by pushing past her. Luckily this propelled her over the first obstacle and back on the course. To which she ran headfirst into the pit of foam blocks.

As the grand finale, the "instructors/kid wranglers" lined all the kids up to sit around the trampoline floor while one kid laid on the trampoline. The instructor them jumped on the floor and propelled the kid up about 5 feet and caught them mid-air. I thought for sure that little bug wasn't going to go for that. But she patiently watched all the kids lay on the ground, cross the arms over their chest and get kicked into the air. She actually laid down on the floor by the mat and put her arms across her chest like she was practicing. When it came time for her turn, she walked up like a little soldier, laid down, crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling like it was a military drill. Even the instructor laughed. She popped little bug up, caught her and little bug didn't even crack a smile. She just ran off the trampoline mat as if to say, "alright, checked that activity off the list" and ran headfirst into the pit of foam.