5 minute snippet of our day

I took the boys to Chuck E. Cheese today, aka hell on earth. But, Monkey had not seen his two best buds for a while and that's somewhere that is centrally located for our three families- we all technically live near the same city, but are still all about an hour apart from each other. So, CEC it was. I should add that one of the families only has one child and the other has two, but one who will not leave the mom's side. So, I was the only one with 2 runners and a baby.

I'm not going to go into a full description of our time there, as it would be way too long and probably give me a nervous breakdown if I actually had to think about all of it. But, I'll just give you a little glimpse by describing 5 minutes of our day.

I was holding Cub and talking to the two other moms at our table, while the big kids were off playing. I glanced around and realized that I didn't see Bear, so I got up to make sure I could find him. I didn't see him anywhere, but when I circled back around to our table, one of my friends pointed out that the curtain up on stage was moving...and Bear's head popped out. So, I rushed up there to find him behind the curtain, beating on the mechanical Chuck E., trying to get him to move.

Got him settled back out in the play area, happily playing the whack-a-whatever game. The other two moms got up to check on their kids and I had to nurse a cranky Cub...without my nursing cover, which is almost always with me, but I really sucked at planning this morning. Almost as soon as I got him situated and had myself sufficiently covered as best I could, Bear took off running.

Up on stage, the curtains had opened and Old Chuck was now singing and dancing. Bear climbed up and joined him, dancing his little heart out. I sighed, but thought "Oh well, at least I know where he is." I fed Cub for another minute to get a little more milk in his belly so that he wouldn't scream when I took him off, and then went to go get Bear.

As I was heading back to our table with the little boys, I hear the loudspeaker: "Attention wah-wah-wah, would Monkey's mommy please report to the wah-wah-wah, Monkey's mommy, thank you." Even with the wah-wah-wahs, I could understand that my oldest child had thought himself lost. Apparently, he chose the moment that I was off getting Bear down from the stage to return to our table and found no one there. So, he told another mom nearby that he couldn't find his mommy and she took him to an employee, and there you have it.

All that, in five minutes. I'm blocking the rest of it out and not going back there unless a. I can take only one child with me or b. 4 or 5 years have passed.