Strike!

Or, how to bowl with preschoolers...

We did the bowling thing with Meaghan's preschool on Tuesday (yeah, so I'm going to use names now, we're all friends here and I know most of your kiddies names. So, we have Meaghan (4), Emma(2.5) and Ethan(6mos)). I was stoked about staying and hanging out with her during this life altering event. I was under the impression that she was too. We get there, get settled, and... she doesn't want to bowl. *sigh* Finally I convince her to give it a try, she slinks up the balls, rolls it out of the holder nearly rolling it on her foot, drags it with her arms hanging way down low, dragging on the group Neanderthal style, does the limpest loft into the gutter I've ever seen and slouches away. I'm sorry, isn't there some kind of prerequisite that demands that you must be atleast 9 before behaving like that?! So we let the other three in our group take their turns (you know, the kids who actually wanted to bowl...) and then it's Meaghan's again, except now that bowling appears to be good enough for everyone else, she may as well have at it too. So she gets right into it and next thing I know I'm refereeing her from bullying the other kids out of their turns! What the?!

We had an hour for bowling (and with 3 and 4 year olds, that equals about two turns each) and ofcourse Meaghan is now starving to absolute death. Yes, I did feed her breakfast only 90 minutes before, but, now I get to play the ever exciting part of the bad mommy who doesn't want to pay $5 for a sample sized bag of Dorito's like everyone else's awesome mom. In all honesty I left my purse with Mr. Pretties since I didn't think an hour at the bowling alley warranted me having to keep track of it and mind small hands and their magnetic attraction to purse pockets (not in a pilfering kind of way).

Then we have the mom in our group who came with her DD and brought her little baby (do you have any idea how happy it makes me to know I can look at other moms with teeny weeny babies and not feel the need to run off and find Mr. Pretties and convince him of the imperativeness of procreating again?!) which was nice, but she ignored her daughter the entire time and sat at a table at the other side of the alley (note: all the moms in our group had babies on their lap). No big deal really, the other moms and I pitched in and helped her with her turns, until the last three frames. Now as you know, when bowling the computer keeps track of turns and basically you get three rolls each turn, it counts as a roll when a ball reaches the end of the alley. Now with preschoolers, those balls don't always make it there... so the mom who decided to help her daughter out at the end realized that waiting for her daughter's ball to reach the end of the alley was taking a long time, so for each roll her daughter did she did one too, to get it on to the next turn. Great. Except for the part where that meant 3 rolls = 6 rolls and you've now taken your daughters turn as well as mine. Meaghan can be very strong willed and high strung, she likes watching the numbers on the screen to tell her when it's her turn and to see how well she's doing (she bowled by herself with me standing 3ft away and was beating butt to my complete shock) and now the other mom has taken her turn, messed up her score (she was throwing gutters intentionally) and doesn't even get it. I know, I know, who cares, it's not a big deal, etc... etc... but it really bothers me when people are completely oblivious when they do things like that and I am a 100% non-confrontational person so there was no way I was saying anything about it. God I really need to grow a pair...

Oh shoot, that reminds me, tomorrow is 'Show and Share' day at preschool... now I have to think of something to bring... better get on that right about now...

In other news, Mr. Pretties and I are going on a date Saturday night. Our landlords gave us a movie theatre package (tickets, snacks, drinks, etc...) complete with childcare for Christmas in, oh, 2007 and we had yet to use them (no reason really... the kids love them, we trust them, Mr. Pretties works odd hours and they both work very long hours so I hated to ask them) so they're coming Saturday and bringing dinner for the kids. Mr. Pretties and I haven't been on a date since I was pregnant with Emma in 2006 so we're about due. We aren't really movie people, but we'll enjoy it anyway and I'm looking forward to it. We really need more date nights, especially now that the LP's are a little older.

Apparently Jasmine has taken a plunge in the aquarium and it's up to me to rescue her (Meaghan says the reasoning behind my need to rescue is because I'm a brave knight... go figure...) so I better get on that too or who knows what'll happen, you know how aggressive angel fish can be...