A few weeks ago, Chloe was hysterical because we told her she was too big to go to the kids’ play area at Ikea. I mean, really and truly hysterical. As if she had hurt herself badly. Or had a bad fight with a friend.
As it turns out, we recently realized that she is not too big to play at Ikea. And so today we all trekked to that crazy store, in part because we knew how excited Chloe would be to be able to jump in the ball pit and do whatever else kids do there.
We arrived and waited on line for about 20 minutes. During that time, Chloe insisted that the play area at this particular Ikea isn’t nearly is good as the play area at another one she’s been to. I think they’re all the same and tell her so, but no matter. She’s right and I’m wrong. The ball pit isn’t as good. They don’t have as many slides. It basically sucks. When I remarked that she might be underwhelmed by the attractions simply because she’s a lot older now than she was the last time she went, she refused to be persuaded.
She moped around for awhile, trying to place whatever blame she could possibly think of on us, to no avail. Not much we could do about the impressiveness (or lack thereof) of Ikea’s play area. In the end, she decided to pass on the opportunity to spend some time with Sophie, and instead followed us around the store.
For the first few minutes, she was fine. She ran about, took notes for us and didn’t really complain. But we knew that her contentedness would be short-lived. Sure enough, eventually she started to moan and groan. I’m bored. I’m hungry (the girls have been eating nonstop recently – it’s pretty incredible and gross). Can I get this? Can I get that? If I’m being honest, Ikea kind of makes me feel all those things, too. But I wasn’t going to admit that to her. No way.
Needless to say, I was extremely glad once we were able to make our escape. Not without buying a few things, of course. At least little Sophie had a good time in the ball pit.
