This story deserves a little bit of background. This morning I decided it'd be a good idea to get the boys out of the house since we didn't go anywhere yesterday. I was going to take them to the Parents as Teachers play group which we usually do once a week if we don't have anything else going on. So I got everyone ready and out the door. We got there only a few minutes late, only to realize I didn't have the wagon nor my Hold-on Handles with me. I considered trying to get in the door without either but since I didn't have a very good parking spot, I decided it probably wasn't a good idea. So I turned around and drove back home to get the handles. Play group only lasts an hour, so I knew that it wouldn't be worth going back. I decided instead to go to the open gym at one of our local churches. I checked online to make sure they didn't have any events going on, and sure enough they were closed for the week. Glad I didn't drive the 20 minutes there to find this out!
I was starting to feel defeated and considered just staying home...but then I finally settled on going to the Chick-fil-A play place. When we got there, I went through the drive-thru to grab myself an iced coffee, then I parked, got everyone out of the van, had them grab their handles, and headed into the restaurant. People, of course, stared and commented, as they always do. We got into the enclosed play area and I took their shoes off and set them free to play. My goal was to be able to finish my coffee before someone had a meltdown and we had to leave.
The boys were actually playing pretty nicely despite the fact that it was really loud with all the screaming children running around. Ollie was up in the play structure playing with one of his little cars when I heard him start crying. I looked up to see what was wrong. I couldn't pinpoint it right away but a little 3 year old girl told me another boy took his car. Shortly after this, I saw a matchbox car come down the slide. I walked over there to grab it, right as a four-year-old boy came whooshing down and snatched it up before me. I went over to him and said, "Hey, that's my little boy's favorite car. He's really sad that you took it. Can you please give it back?" I opened up my hand with a friendly smile and he ran away with it. I looked around for his mom to come in and intervene. Of course, I was the only parent actually in the play area at that time. He ran up the play area, almost stepped on Ollie, then came down the slide again...death-gripping the car. This time I wasn't quite as nice. "Hey, buddy...that car doesn't belong to you. You need to give it back, please." At this point, I reached toward the car in his hand. He yanked his hand away and ran off again. I was getting rather frustrated at this point since Ollie was still crying. So I pulled a second car out and gave it to him to calm him down. You better believe I wasn't going to leave though, without getting that little yellow car back from the bratty kid. He was starting to figure out I wasn't a Momma to be messed with, sohe started hanging out in the top of the play structure rather than coming down the slide again to face me. I decided to wait it out. He had to come down sometime. Finally he did and I reached out for the car and said, "Give it to me now or I'm going to go talk to your mom?" He was contemplating when his mom finally came in and said "Are you playing nicely?" I told her that he took my two-year-old's car and made him cry. The meanie four-year-old gave the car to his mom and she gave it back to me. Don't mind that she didn't even ask her child to apologize. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I guess.
Fortunately they soon left and we were able to enjoy a little more playtime before heading home. Allow me to paint a picture of how well-behaved my kids were being during this time. They went back and forth between playing with their cars, "talking" to each other, and just running around playing. Ollie made a girlfriend with the little three-year-old who came to his rescue earlier on. Nolan kept dancing to whatever music that happened to be playing in his head. And Lucas kept going up to one of the other moms and giving her little side hugs. They were being so good!
Getting out of the house with three little ones is never easy, but I do it to keep myself sane. Often times I come home feeling defeated because one or more of my kids had a huge meltdown. But days like today give me the confidence and energy to do it all again tomorrow. Because, dang...I have two-year-old triplets and today...they were the best behaved kids at Chick-fil-A!
And for the record, I DID get to finish my coffee. Small victories!
