I forgot to mention that we took Callia out to Chuck E. Cheese (in Hickory Hollow, Antioch) Saturday night. We ordered a pepperoni pizza and some drinks and sat down to wait for the “show” and the food.

Callia and I went to play some games while we waited.. which probably was a mistake. She rode the Stewart Little car.. where you sit next to the giant mouse in a little car and it gently rocks back and forth. She didn’t seem too impressed.

Then we tried the Clifford The Big Red Dog ride. Exactly the same thing, except it’s in the shape of the dog instead of a car. She LOVED it. I tried to pick her up when the ride was over and she screamed.. so we rode again. And again. And again. She was obsessed. I looked around to see if any other kids were waiting for a ride.. I scanned the area for dirty looks from parents.. but I think we were ok.

I saw a pizza go out to our table and Laura motioned for us to come back. Callia was rather unhappy with that. She screamed “PUPPY!” and reached out for the ride all the way back to our table. We struggled to get her to eat. She wasn’t havin’ it. She wanted to get back on the Clifford ride. The only thing that distracted her was the Chuck E. Cheese Show.

When I was a kid, we had Showbiz Pizza.. with a big animatronic band rockin’ out and action on three stages. This place had ONE robot Chuck on a tiny stage and a large screen tv with some of his “friends” interacting with him on video. That’s like phoning it in! What was cool, though was they had a video camera set up in front of a blue wall.. so the kids could jump around and they’d be superimposed over the show on the tv’s. Callia didn’t go over there, but she did stand next to the stage and dance for a while.

After Laura and I ate the pizza, we went back to the Clifford ride. Callia rode it about a dozen more times.. then we started looking around for other things for her to do. She didn’t like leaving the puppy.. but we did ride a Merry-Go-Round, a big dump truck ride, a school bus ride and some other stuff.

We finished up the night by playing Skee-Ball for a bit. Callia was able to roll the balls a foot or two, then I’d grab ‘em and shoot ‘em up at the targets for her. We did pretty well.. we’ll have to take her bowling next time we want family fun.