McDonalds NEMall PlayPlace Review

I took the kiddos to our favorite McDonald's for lunch today. Basically, I needed to run enough energy off Big Girl to prevent her from rending a tear in the fabric of the universe.

Recently, the McDonalds at NorthEast Mall (Pipeline @ 820 in Hurst, TX) underwent major renovations. Here are my thoughts:

1. Thank you for continuing to have a bathroom just for the little ones. It is hugely helpful.
2. The flat screen against the back wall is not.  Can't see it, can't hear it, didn't come to McD's to watch TV.
3. I understand the point of nailed down furniture.  But it's not practical.  If you are unable to change the configuration of the chairs/tables, many families can't easily be accomodated.
4. Hey!  Some of us have strollers!  And mine doesn't fit very easily in the PlayPlace.  I'm limited in where I can sit, because of overly narrow aisles, and that means that if I get there after those tables are already taken, I either can't come in, or I have to hope someone takes pity on me and moves to a table only accessible for walkers, not riders.
5. Safety, safety, safety - I can definitely see that a lot of thought for this was put into the redesign and it is much appreciated.  I know that when Big Girl goes into the hamster-trail-for-kids, she's going to be safe.
6. But could we maybe have kept a few outlets?  Like on high-up non-reachable-by-mini-monsters areas?  One of the things I love best about McDonald's is your free WiFi...but if I want to work there while my little ones play, my battery is eventually going to go dead...
7. Squooshy floors are cool and make running around without shoes by drunk-on-giddiness toddlers lots safer.  Love the new floors you put in.
8. Napkins and condiments would be appreciated.  When you go to McD's with a million mini people, and have fifteen trays to balance with two hands, stopping to get napkins and condiments on the way past is sometimes out of the question.  But...I don't want to bring my squirts in just to abandon them there while I go on a napkin-and-ketchup retrieval mission.  Could we maybe have a napkin and ketchup station in the munchkin room?

Overall, it's a great place.  Some of the redesign areas don't thrill me, but Big Girl loves it, Bubba looks on with envy (gotta walk first, dude), and I get some time to sit and relax while they have fun.

Kids and Snow Days

Remember how exciting it used to be when a snow day was announced? We'd gather around the TV at 5 AM praying that our school name would scroll past next. In the average winter, we'd get 3-6 days off for snow...which would then be made up by deleting days from spring break or staying in school longer in June.

Of course, I also grew up in the north, where a snow day required an actual appreciable snowfall or severely slick roads.

Here in Texas, I wasn't quite expecting to deal with snow days for my kiddos. I mean, the thought of an inch of snow shutting anything down is just hilarious. But then you consider that there's like 3 snow plows in an area home to six million people...and the lack of services for slick roads makes sense.

My daughter's preschool is closed for the third day in a row. This blows my mind. Especially since that means balancing kid duty and work-from-home duty today. Again. When my kid would actually rather head out the door to play with her friends and I would rather head out the door to work with mine.

What's your kid-and-snow-day strategy? We're loading up on Dora, Play Doh, coloring books, and hiding anything with removable lids or copious amounts of fur. Do I really need to explain that part?

And we're hoping for better weather next week. Because this mom is much less of a snow day fan as an adult than she was as a child!



Companion Pieces

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Texans and Snow

The Officer's Wife: Snow Days and Scheduling

Bouncing Baby!

Spoiled Baby got to experience BOUNCING for the first time yesterday, and boy was that fun! We went to my Goddaughter's 6th birthday party, which was at a neat little place called BounceU.

At first, Spoiled Baby wasn't too sure about this whole bouncing thing...and she DEFINITELY didn't want to bounce unless Mama or Daddy was holding her.

But then she started to have fun. And so did we! About an hour of bouncing was just the trick to get smiles on her face.



After that, we moved onto the mini basketball hoop - great fun with Daddy!



And then...she found the MINI SLIDE! A little baby slide that she could go down that wasn't so big as to frighten her, like most other slides. And so we went again, and again, and again. FUN!

All in all, a fun time.

How was your weekend?

Chucky Cheese is COOL

Ok, so Spoiled Baby loves her some Chucky Cheese! We had a bunch of coins left after going there with her cousin Z back in September, so we ventured out to face the craziness again today. LOVE IT!

Mystery Mouseketool

Anyone watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with their kiddos? I had a post up on my Twitter earlier today musing that, just once, I wish that the mystery mouseketool was a taser.

Anyone ever have that wish?

How about an electrified collar? Maybe an EASY button, since Mickey et al would be totally screwed without the Handy Helpers.

I wonder about the lessons this show teaches, quite honestly. I took along some DVDs of Mickey episodes when we went to my mom's house earlier this month, and she remarked that they don't seem as, ah, challenging as the Mickey of 20 years ago.

It just seems that some curious episodes are aired. Like the one with Donald and the Beanstalk. He gave away his chicken. Then stole it back. Um, are we really teaching our kiddos to steal?

Ok, so I'm being a little tongue in cheek here, but really, to get back to my main point, it's time to taser Mickey! (And time for our household to find new kids shows to watch!)

What's your favorite show to watch with your kiddos?

Mindnumbing Disney

We spent yesterday afternoon hanging out with Chris' aunt and cousins. One of his cousins has a baby boy who is about to turn 1. During the afternoon, the Disney Channel was on the boob tube, with some kind of animated Mickey show on. The kiddo was entranced. No matter where he crawled or who was holding him or if he was in his play pen, he had to have his head turned towards the TV, which was playing episodes of the show back to back to back to back to back to back to back...

I came home feeling a bit mindnumbed. Chris' aunt, the child's grandmother, posited that perhaps Disney used subliminal messages to keep the attention of the kiddos. I think she's on to something, there.

What kinds of shows did you all watch when you were little? Did you even watch a lot of TV? I didn't. First of all, even though I was raised in the 80s and cable existed, it didn't exist in my rural hometown. We had a TV that had a VHF and a UHF dial. The only time anything kid-like or animated came on network TV was Saturday morning cartoons. PBS did have some shows on in the afternoons that my mother put on for me occasionally, though. So if I was exposed to TV when I was a really little kid, it wasn't anything like Mickey's Crackhouse on the Disney channel. (I could, however, give you the roster of characters and the complete story lines from about 4 different soap operas by the age of five. Which may explain why I now refuse to watch soaps and in fact rarely watch TV in general.)

I'm a little scared with Catherine coming and finding ways to keep her little mind occupied. Granted, throughout the day, it'll be her Dad who determines what's going on - I'll be at work. But at night, when I'm home and Dad is at work, I'm a little scared at the prospect of going stark raving crazy after watching 70 episodes of an animated show in a row, even if it gives her some kind of valuable knowledge or keeps her quiet or captures her attention.

What are all ya'lls thoughts? What shows do your kiddos like? How do you avoid going nuts when watching shows that just make you want to scream but your children adore?

What Did You Give Up?

Very few people have only a singular focus in life. Most of us have a million things going on at any one point in time. It's what keeps us occupied, it's what fulfills us, and it's what drives us stark raving mad.

With less than two months to go until Spoiled Baby is born, I've been giving a lot of thought to how I'll manage my time once she's here. For the first 12 or so weeks, I'll be at home on maternity leave. After that, however, it's time to start juggling again.

Here's what I'll be juggling:

• Biggest priority - Raising Spoiled Baby
• Bigger priority - Loving Funny Daddy
• Big priority - Managing Crazy House
• Full time job - HR Project Manager/Analyst
• Part time freelancing - Web content writing and editing
• Constant blogging - Personal and paid
• Occasional judging - HS Speech and Debate
• Cooking shows and sales - Pampered Chef
• Volunteer training - Leadership Development
• Favored pursuit - Fiction writing

Just looking at that list, I feel tired. But with the exception of the first item, the other 9 are already the activities I juggle between in life.

It seems like everybody and their brother loves to tell me that I'm going to have to give up either "everything" or "a whole lot" once Spoiled Baby gets here. But...I don't want to.

Does that sound selfish?

I like my many involvements. I've always had a zillion things going on - dating right back to childhood. I once told my mother, in the second grade, that I was burned out. But when she cut back on my activities the next school year, I was so bored and miserable that I found more things to throw myself into.

I'm convinced that with careful planning, I can still juggle all of these activities and be a good mom to Spoiled Baby. But if it really comes down to it, it'll be the last three items on the list that go by the wayside: my fiction, the training I present, and my Pampered Chef business.

What do you all think? What did you give up when you became a mommy? Leave me comments with your thoughts!