It’s tough being a small child in our small town. Besides the city parks and organized sports, there aren’t a whole lot of options for entertainment. We certainly don’t have the huge indoor play gyms and inflatable bouncy places. We don’t even have a movie theater anymore.

Since we had to postpone E.B.’s birthday outing 3 weeks ago due to my raging sinus infection, we hit the road Saturday in search of fun in the form of a giant, smiling rat. We found him 2 hours later.

My baby experienced Chuck E. Cheese for the first time.

I came prepared, though. Not to be thwarted by the Chuck E. Cheese disease, we were armed with hand sanitizer. We drilled E.B. on staying near to us at all times and about stranger danger. Then we took a deep breath and opened the door to the place.

Oh. My. Gawd.

The place reminded me of a kiddy casino. Lights flashed, games were ringing and dinging, the chatter was at roar level and there were kids. running. everywhere. It was like a cracked-out daycare multiplied by 10. We placed out order, were escorted to a booth, and sat down for a moment to take it all in.

In the two hours we were there, E.B. played his heart out. He smiled, laughed, and had the time of his life. I’ll admit I got sucked in into some of the games, too. When it was all over, E.B. cashed out his measley 300 tickets for some cotton candy, a mini deck of playing cards, and a piece of candy.

I really do have to hand it to the Chuck E. Cheese we visited. They immediately stamped our family’s hands with matching numbers that showed up only under blacklight, so there was no getting in or getting out with children without passing a checkpoint. This eased my mind somewhat in the event that if E.B. happened to get seperated from us he wouldn’t make it very far. Hopefully. The staff was also friendly and helpful.

However, the best part was after we had left, driving down the road, our ears still ringing from all of the chaos. E.B. very sweetly sighed and told us, “Chuck E. Cheese was soooo much fun!”. Then he promptly fell to sleep, completely exhausted.

I’m glad we waited until he was 5 years old to try this and I’m also glad we only had one child to keep up with. It was definitely an experience.