Playing at McDonalds

Well, it's official. As of Sunday, my wife and I have officially become "those parents". I can't say I'm terribly proud of our decision, but truth be told, I doubt it will be the last time. When you've got an extremely active 21-month old little boy, and you live in a >900 square foot condo, he's got to play somewhere.

Here's the deal: we live in a small condo. It's what we could afford when we bought it, but we knew at the time it was only a starter home, not where we'd be living in the rest of our lives. Lord willing, we'll move into something larger, preferably with a yard, in a year or two, but for now, here we are. On the summer days when it's not raining, the Lovely and Gracious wife usually takes the kids to the park in the morning so that our son can run around and play. In the afternoons after everyone gets up from their naps, they usually go to one of the local malls that has an indoor free play area.

Unfortunately, naps ran late on Sunday. Since the mall closes earlier, we realized that we would only be there for maybe ten minutes before things started to close. This would have been somewhat less than optimal, since our son prefers to play around other kids, and our daughter needs lots of noise and people to hold her attention and keep her awake. The question was simple, really: where do we go at 7pm on Sunday that's open, has a play area, and most important, is free/very cheap.

Which is how we found ourselves in the play area of a local McDonalds, eating Chicken McNuggets and Chipotle Snack Wraps, and helping our son climb up into their large slide/gym thing.

Yup, despite our college degrees and my white collar job, I'm pretty sure we're even closer to being a redneck family than we've ever been before.

Still, I guess the important thing is that The Boy had fun and got a lot of exercise. He was sweating pretty good by the end, and slept well that night. Which, of course, only means that we'll be making more McDonalds trips when we need a cheap indoor play area in the future.

Ba-da-da-da-da... I'm lovin' it. I guess. Maybe