Scared

For lunch yesterday I took the kids to McDonald's as a treat. (Feeling guilty about my social life, for sure- see below.) (Imagine McD's with the dinner that followed!- see below. Can fries get any worse?)
We got our happy meals and salad and went to the play area at the back. I had driven to a location about 10 minutes from the house, and we had to sing to keep Ali from drifting off on the drive over.
Leila ate her chicken nuggets and some of her French fries. Ali ate his French fries and some of his chicken nuggets. They both drank their milk and played with their bees. I ate my salad (okay) and then filched some fries (horrible) and tried the vanilla iced coffee (pretty bad). When they were done eating, I pulled out my grading, and Leila headed for the play structure. She didn't want to go alone. When Ali was ready we all went in. Leila scrambled onto the toddler structure and slid down the slide and explored. Ali stood in the entrance, looked over to where Leila was, put his hands to his mouth and said "It's scary." He refused to go any further in. Leila eyed the bigger kid structure. She was nervous, but finally she decided to give it a go. About three steps up she started screaming bloody murder and I had to talk her down. They found other ways to entertain themselves for a while. Eating more fries. Hiding under the tables. Leila complained that there was no one to play with. Then a girl showed up with her brother and they disappeared into the structure. Leila decided that she could do this now. She went up the stairs and crawled across one of the tunnels, slowly, with encouragement, and THEN started screaming bloody murder. I told her to be quiet or she'd scare the other kids. She finally got herself down. I figured, well, they must be ready to go home. But they weren't. It took another 15 minutes to get them out of there.