It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye…or their hearing?

I dread the mere thought of indoor play centres during the school holidays. So what did I do the other day when a light hearted conversation with a friend and some hardcore entertainment for the kids were desperately required? I threw my children into a giant circus-themed menagerie for four hours.  

Just walking through the Magna Latched gates, kids tagged like homing pigeons, was like heading into a zoo. My kids couldn’t get at it fast enough – leaping like little lemurs across the floor. My red-headed three-year-old son otherwise known as, “The Ranga”, was swinging through the oversized enclosure like his namesake orangutan within seconds.

Where does all of the energy come from?? And the noise!! The cacophony of squawking children was giving me a twitch and I’d only been there for five minutes. I glanced around and noticed some grandparents with earphones listening to an iPod!

The frenzied, primal rock concert (devoid of any music) continued while I waited for my friend.  And then she arrived…with one, two, three, four, FIVE children. That’s five plus my two equals SEVEN! She has three kids of her own but had acquired a couple of ring ins. This disturbed me on a number of levels…

1.   Is this what happens when your kids start school (as my daughter will be doing in a few months)? You have to look after Other People’s Children under the guise of a “play date”?

2.   We were about to add seven children to the seven hundred children already darting, leaping and squawking around the room.

I scanned the room for a table but every single one was occupied by parents with backpacks and water bottles and prams and shoes and seventy macerated hot chips. I began to stalk the tables like a crazed woman and wouldn’t have gone past bribery and corruption to attain one. When one large group FINALLY decided to leave, I pounced on them, and much to their dismay, I was sitting down before they had a chance to clear their belongings.  Not my usual style but it was survival of the fittest!

The food arrived and my friend and I managed to retrieve all SEVEN children, who in turn proceeded to squish another seventy hot chips into the furniture. God knows how we located all seven. I believe indoor play centres should introduce a large piece of elastic that attaches each kid to their parent or carer. This would alleviate the inevitable journey up a fully enclosed plastic tunnel to rescue a stuck or lost child, or a trip to the bottom of the God forsaken ball pit. Ball pits are cesspits – dig deep enough and you will find a veritable lucky dip. I know they are cleaned blah, blah, blah, but I have, in the past, penetrated the plump, colourful surface to search for a missing sock and have discovered a treasure trove of crusty socks, clumps of hair, nit-infested combs, and mucus-filled tissues.

The magnificent seven then stuffed their faces full of ice-cream and lined up for the carousel. They chanted and rattled the gate like caged animals and my immediate thought was hot chips + ice-cream + spinning = projectile vomiting. 

The Ranga giggled with delight as he whizzed past and then suddenly decided that enough was enough and crawled out of the cup…WHILE IT WAS STILL SPINNING! I screamed and rattled the Magna Latched gate trying to get in, but discovered it was also parent proof.

By some sheer stroke of luck he came out of it unscathed, apart from being emotionally shattered.  I braced myself for the vomit but it didn’t come!

My children are champion vomiters and don’t do well with dizziness, as I discovered one day at a local park when they spun themselves into a frenzy on a spinning thing. The Ranga fell off, staggered like a drunken sailor, face planted in the wood chip and then vomited. I was both amused and horrified and assured everyone that he did not have a gastro virus as I casually kicked some wood chip over the pile of vomit. My almost five-year-old daughter saved her vomit for the car park.  

The kids darted off again and my friend and I tried to continue our staccato conversation, which was punctuated by toilet breaks and the comforting of squashed children. When we came to the realisation that we were flogging a dead horse, we rallied the troops.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, EIGHT! My daughter had befriended a random child who was her “new best friend and could she please come for a sleepover?” NO! I had to explain that random children CANNOT under any circumstances come to the house for sleepovers.

After a final head count I cast my eyes over my children. All limbs appeared intact, only one squashed hand and a scratch on the forehead. Both were wearing TWO socks – matching and their own!  The Ranga had a tub of tomato sauce and an entire chocolate ice-cream down his front, and surprisingly no one had vomited. I could no longer hear a word anyone was saying, but even with a lollipop shoved in their sticky mouths I could see they were smiling.