The magical mystery of Hippo Hop

Hippo Hop, Monkey Joe's, or whatever the name, these indoor playgrounds that are pretty prevalent in Atlanta are a wonder to behold, especially if you remember being a kid in the '80s, about to wet your pants at the prospect of a single slide in a McDonald's, not to mention one of those funk-nasty ball pits. (Seriously, in retrospect, those things were nasty.) These arenas of childhood wonder have multiple, giant inflatable structures that seem like a Marine training course designed by Willy Wonka.
So we took Caroline to Hippo Hop on a Sunday afternoon with Aunt Holly and Cousin Charlotte. The Mommy and Holly had been before with the girls, just not on a weekend. And what an experience.

The girls had fun overall. I got more tense as the experience went on -- there are bigger kids everywhere (Caroline and Charlotte are on the small side, but there are things for them to do) but size wasn't the biggest problem with the kids there.

Some can argue this I guess, because there's someone at the door making sure kids don't escape, but its probably not a good idea to walk in there with your kid and proceed to not watch them at all. At all. Having a conversation with another parent while you watch them is fine. Things that are not fine that I saw there:
-- taking your laptop and doing work
-- taking a nap (no idea how that guy was asleep in that racket)
-- talking to other parents while your psycho kid, age three-ish, comes up to my child randomly, puts his palm to her face and scratches it, runs off then kicks and bites another kid.

Yeah. Caroline was assaulted by some random kid. She was fine, just a little red mark under her nose and she quickly started having fun again, but come on! Chances are you know your kid is completely the devil and shouldn't be unattended.

I won't say exactly how it ended, but I will say The Mommy got involved and found his dad. Pretty proud of her for that one.

Aside from that mess, Caroline and Charlotte had fun, and Caroline got on the three-and-under inflatable thing and actually climbed up one of the parts of it and took a little slide on her own. Pretty proud of her for that one.