Today's party was at Pump It Up, so I knew what to expect since we had just attended on there not too long ago. Check out the logo in the picture up above. You can't buy product placement that good in a photo. * Unfortunately after all the excitement yesterday I don't think Quinn got enough sleep last night since various little things that would go wrong would basically set him off. On the way there his juice spilled a little in the car and you would have thought it was the end of the world because 'he wanted all of it.'
* Actually, if anyone from Pump It Up is reading this, get in touch with me because now that I think about it, you could indeed buy product placement like that (I'll take cash please).
Once we got to there Quinn was in a much better mood (I think the adrenaline rush was well underway at this point). They have the whole timing aspect down to a science and once you've been once, you pretty much know the routine. We ended up going into the same arenas we were in last time, so overall the experience was very much like the last time, which a slightly different group of kids.
The one thing that was new this time was the 'boxing' accessories. Last time they didn't bring these out. And now I think I know why they didn't. Evidently they have a rule that only kids 6 and older and play with it. Now of the kids at this party, I think there was one that six or over, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to bring out an accessory that 95% of the kids can't use (which explains why last time they weren't brought out). Still not sure why they brought them out this time, but Quinn came over to me after hearing about the age restrictions and was in tears. When I asked what the problem was he explained to me that he couldn't play with the boxing stuff because only kids six and over can play. Now there are times as a parent where you know what you're about to do is wrong, and that you probably shouldn't proceed down that path, but there you go doing it anyway. For me this was one of those times. I knew the response I was about to give was wrong, and I know it's going to come back and bite me in the butt at some point in the future, but I looked down at Quinn and said "Just tell him you're six." And to the little boy's credit, he can sometimes be honest to a fault, because he looked back up at me perplexed and said "But I'm only five and a half". At this point I figure I've committed to this, so why turn back now and I said "That's true, but he doesn't know that." It was like watching a little light bulb go off over his head as he started smiling. Next thing I know Quinn's over there explaining to the guy that why yes indeed, he is six. Since no other kids were old enough to box with him, I went in and sparred with him. Now from the picture up above, you can see that these aren't real boxing gloves, and with all the padding, it would be really hard to actually hurt someone with these. I'm not sure why there's a lower age limit of six on this other than some arbitrary we don't want to get sued type deal. Oh, and I should point out that a couple of the other kids even called Quinn out and told the guy that "He's not six, he's only five, he's just saying he's six so he can play." Out of the mouths of babes (and apparently five year olds). The guy working the shift obviously really didn't care and had done his CYA job by asking the age, and ended up letting Quinn and me go in anyway.
After the Pump It Up party we were suppose to go and meet Ben for Ice Skating. When we got home, Ginger and Catherine were both asleep taking a nap, so after a quick call to Ben, the Ice Skating plans fell apart. Ben had apparently slightly hurt his ankle running and didn't want to risk aggravating the injury. Quinn was a bit disappointed, but Ben cheered him up by telling him that he could just play Mario Kart instead. I'm not convinced Quinn didn't pay him or something to say that. So at that point I couldn't really not let him play, so he played until Ginger and Catherine woke up (which as it turns out, wasn't that long, maybe twenty to thirty minutes).
Dinner was painful. After Quinn's visit to the food therapist we're back to introducing something new at dinner that he has to try. Tonight was the dreaded applesauce. The horror! What's so painful about this is he used to eat applesauce all the time when he was younger, up until he was about two at which point he decided he didn't like anything. Now it's like pulling teeth to get him to eat it. Ginger took over the job of sitting with him until he ate it. Just to give you an idea of the time involved, while she was sitting with him, I washed the pots from dinner, washed some clothes, folded a load of clothes and collected the trash from around the house and took it to the curb. And as long as it was, it actually felt longer. I'm guessing we'll be more or less clinically insane within a couple of weeks unless things get better during future dinners.
4 comments:
having 3 kids of my own i know how difficult it is to get them to eat anything new or even slightly different. this isn't meant to sound critical, but let me get this right. a food therapist thinks that applesauce is an important enough foodstuff to force your kids to eat?
i'm 35 and i don't eat applesauce! surely there are more important foods to be encouraging your kids to eat like fruit, veg, meat... paper! please correct me if i'm wrong, but applesauce seems like a strange one to be putting so much time and emphasis on 'having to eat'.
like i say, i'm not being critical i'm just asking.
It's not just applesauce. That just happens to be what I mentioned. I didn't go into elaborate details since I felt the post was already borderline unreadable it was so long. The focus really was just on getting him to try something new. He decided the thing he would try would be the applesauce. Ginger also gave him a couple of pieces of banana (we're talking less than a centimeter long), a few strands of angel hair pasta (sans sauce), and earlier in the day he had the option of trying a bite of pizza. He could have tried any of those things and it would been fine and counted towards his new food, but he kept picking the applesauce. The goal was he had to try something new, and maybe we were wrong in giving him some measure of control in letting him pick what that thing was, but we did and he choose the applesauce.
I think it's more what the applesauce represents. And that's a resistance to partake of anything other than what he has convinced himself he can / will eat. He refuses to eat bananas, saying they taste bad and will gag to the point of causing himself to vomit if he eats one. Puree that banana and put it in a drink, and he has no problem. This resistance to eating is obviously in his head, not really in the taste. The applesauce was just a choice on our part of something we thought we had a shot at getting him to eat since he's eaten it before. Sort of the path of (what I thought would be) the least resistance.
I would love it if he would actually eat some fruits, vegetables or any form of meat other than chicken. And I know it's in his head, because when we eat out, he'll snack on Ginger's fried clams because he thinks it's popcorn chicken, but I can bet you if we told him it was fried clams we'd be back to him gagging if he tried it.
You should have explained the concept of rounding. 5.5 =~ 6
That way it wouldn't have been a blatant lie, just a rounding issue.
;-)
Ooo, that's good. I really should have thought of that.
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