Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Party

As I've said before, this year has represented a wonderful social change for Elijah. He's confident, social and seems to have lots of different friends. This became especially obvious to Scott and I in the beginning of October when we all attended Elijah's second Kindergarten birthday party. It was held at Chuck E. Cheese, and this was only Elijah's second experience at Chuck E. Cheese. His first experience, when he was two was only marginally successful, so we'd never gone back. During our first visit, three years ago, Elijah was overwhelmed by all the noise, and had no interest in staying in the same room as the animatronic characters. He stayed close to Scott and I the whole time, and wasn't disappointed when we left.

Our most recent trip was a completely opposite experience, thankfully. Elijah revelled in all the noise and madness, he was completely unfazed and even a little interested in the characters, and wanted to stay all night. Scott and I kept Elijah in our sights all evening, but he was perfectly content playing with his friends and even climbed on the little stage to sing and dance with his sister and other friends. He had an ear to ear grin the whole night. His expression was so animated that I was disappointed that I hadn't brought along my camera. Fortunately, Keira and I discovered a photo booth so we got some photo documentation for the night. For her part, Keira enjoyed herself, too. She liked the dancing, singing, photo booth and a little moving car the best. But, most of the attractions are geared at older children so she wasn't quite as absorbed in all the craziness as her older brother who would've been content staying all night.

At first, Keira was interested in the photo booth and quite content waiting through the process. Of course, she'd used up her wonderful smiles before the camera clicked. But, we still managed to get her looking at the camera for the first two pictures.



Eventually Elijah wanted to take his picture with his sister and I, but as you can see Keira was no longer interested.


He took one last goofy shot all by himself.