Big Boy Birthday Party

OK, I know these pictures are bad--even for me--but in my defense, they were taken with a cell phone camera, which just isn't fast enough to capture the cheetah-like toddler in action (he's the white streak shooting down the slide). Now that I'm doing this blog thing, I've got to remember to tuck the regular camera into my purse for events like these.

Anyway, my friend Erika has a son that just turned five last week (his name is Carter), and Zeke got to go to his party on Monday. For those of you who don’t have kids yet, when you’re three years old and you are invited to go to a five-year-old’s party, it’s roughly the equivalent of a socially awkward and unpopular high school girl getting asked to the prom by the quarterback. An unbelievable development. One you talk to your friends for days in advance, and brag about for months afterward. Such was the case with Zeke. In fact, he was so excited about this event that I was concerned it couldn’t possibly live up to his expectations.

Lucky for me, it did. The event was held at Pump It Up, which is more or less a warehouse full of bouncy houses. Not just the standard, square, get-inside-and-jump-around type like you see at car dealerships and home-based birthday parties, but giant bouncy houses with all kinds of functional variation. Some of them had obstacle courses inside, others had basketball hoops and balls, and one wasn’t a bouncy house at all, but a giant inflatable slide.

Up until two or three weeks ago, Zeke was generally frightened of these things. I don’t think he likes chaos—at least not the level of chaos that is pretty much inherent with inflatable playground structures—so he avoided them. But this time he jumped right in with the pack and went to town. Did the obstacle course about ten times, slid down the big scary slide (which seemed to have been waxed or something because kids were flying down it and shooting right off the end, like the finished products of some high-throughput manufacturing facility), and successfully participated in the “king-of-the-hill” game, where one kid gets up on an elevated section in the center of a giant circular bouncy house, and fights off all comers. It was fun to see him having such a great time, and hanging in there with much older kids.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the birthday boy (he was very busy entertaining all his guests). Sorry Erika!