What a Difference

What a difference a year makes.

Last year around this time I wrote a post about our younger daughter having a tough timegoing to her friend's birthday party. That party was at a jump house place and the second we walked in my daughter wanted to turn around and go home. Mostly because she's not crazy about big crowds or loud noises, and this place has both when you fill it with 20 little four year old kids and their parents.

Now flash forward to this year and this same friend has her party at the same place. Yes, the same place, much to her mother's chagrin. I told the mom that I'd do my best to talk it up and see if I could get my daughter to agree to go.

Apparently that worked because the week of the party she said she would give it a shot.

And then the day of the party came and she said she wouldn't give it a shot.

Nonetheless, since we were committed to it by that time, I said we were going. I made it clear that if she wasn't happy we always had the option to leave. Or to just wait it out for cake.

So we showed up and you'll never beleive what she said to me when we walked in to the place.

"I want to go home."

What?

You thought it was going to be that easy?

Not a chance.

In fact, it took much of my energy and creativity and positive thinking for about 20 minutes before we finally got to a place where she would go into a jumpy with me. And let me tell you that these days I don't have a lot of spare energy just sitting on a shelf ready to go when I want it. But for this occasion, it was worth it.

When I saw that there was no one in the jump house with the basketball hoop I almost had her in that one with me, until some girls came up and got in it right before us. So she renegged. And she LOVES basketball, so I knew it was going to take a little special effort on my part to make this happen.

Next I eyed the obstacle course and saw that at that moment no one was in it. So quick like a bunny I got her over there and in it before she could complain. I feined needing help, acting like a big goof ball that was stuck to the inflatable. I told her to hurry or else someone else would come. I tried a number of tricks but she wasn't budging much past the entry point.

Then I started acting like we were on a pirate ship and told her we had to climb up the hill before the sharks came. This made her laugh a little, but she still wasn't all in. Finally we got on top of the little hill and waited it out for a bit. From there we could sort of feel more like we were in charge. Or at least above all the chaos.

At that point we were caught on film actually enjoying ourselves. The shame of it all.

Before long a little boy came through that I recognized, who happened to be named Jack, so I started calling him Jack Sparrow in my best pirate's voice. Then he bought into our game and before long he was saying that the sharks were coming our way. This then turned into us running out the course and back around again chasing after him - or perhaps he was chasing us - and having a bit more fun than either of us had thought would happen.

Then it was time to enter the next room for more inflatable craziness. Although I think we entered a parallel world really, because at this point my daughter was up and running, exploring everything in the room.

We threw some balls, climbed a wall and went down a very steep slide many many times, and then ended up in the basketball inflatable. She was happy as a clam shooting hoops and jumping around. She would play with friends that came and joined us. And if too many came along I'd see her start to shut down a bit, so we'd move over to the other side where there was another hoop to play with.

All in all, a very successful outing. Things are definitely starting to look up for her.

Another remarkable difference recently was during our trip to Disneyland. Last time we were there, which was actually two years ago, the sound of all the fireworks made her cry and she really didn't enjoy the show, watching it the whole time with her ears covered by her hands which were then covered by my hands.

This year she was perfectly happy to take it all in.

It's worth saying again; what a difference a year makes.