So I'm not feeling so bad about not having given AJ a proper birthday party with his friends anymore. After yesterday's venture to Chuck E. Cheese, it seems fairly apparent that he's not a party guy. He spent most of the afternoon whining and crying and complaining.

Frankly, I'd say I was the one who should have been complaining. I didn't get a goodie bag, nor a piece of cake nor even a chair to sit in. And I spent most of the afternoon standing next to a moth-eaten animatronic rat, who occasionally shrieked badly arranged songs over my head. But I understood AJ's pain. He just wanted to play with his friend, but N. was busy being the birthday boy and visiting with all the other guests. When it was time to leave, AJ began to cry, "I just wanted to play with N.!" We agreed to try to get the boys together in less insane circumstances later this week. Hopefully that will make things better.

Chuck E. Cheese was not quite as bad as I thought, although I was really expecting the worst, so that's not saying too much. But AJ was also underwhelmed. "They didn't have any too fun games there," he observed when he got home. And although he made a killing at Whack-a-Mole and a kid-sized basketball hoop, he really didn't have too much fun at the rest of them. Evidence of this fact comes from a picture of him sitting in a bucking car next to a pint sized Chuck. Although he had begged to get on the ride just moments before, in the picture he looks as if he has just received a death sentence. The grainy, black and white printout from the ride's camera only serves to reinforce that impression. His favorite part of the day, aside from the cake, was feeding his prize tickets into the machine that counted them, making munching noises as it swallowed them up into its mechanical bowels. The prizes themselves were uninspiring. AJ chose a cardboard mask, which he quickly tossed aside, and some clapping hands, which he clapped all the way home.

AJ was more amused by our trip this morning to the international market (the one I wrote of effusively a week or so ago). The market plays lots of great fifties and sixties era tunes. While I was collecting assorted varieties of tomatoes in a plastic bag, I found myself inadvertently shimmying to "Woolly Bully." But AJ's terpsichorean stylings actually commanded an audience. Little old ladies from all over the store clogged the aisles to watch AJ "play dance floor," as he calls it, boogieing across the red and white tiles of the floor in his red Chuck Taylor high tops, a size too small.

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