Last week we celebrated the twins’ birthday at Rainforest Cafe.
Tears and screaming and a seven-foot frog. And that wasn’t only at our table.
Crazy. That’s what the night was
The thing is, M and I should really know better. The Rainforest Cafe has terrified Catie since the first time we took her there. At age one.
I know. One. A baby.
What were we thinking? We were thinking something like, “Hey! We have a kid! Let’s do things with her! Here’s a restaurant with life-sized gorillas, giraffes, elephants, alligators (crocodiles?), and cheetahs. Perfect! Oh! And a synthetic thunderstorm every few minutes? Yes! Sounds just like what our thunder-phobic baby would love.”
Turns out she didn’t.
But that didn’t stop us from bringing her back every couple years. She’s partly to blame. She loved the aquariums and extra-large butterflies on the outside of the restaurant. She would even ask to go inside for the exploding brownie volcano sundae they serve.
But, yeah, those life-sized creatures freaking out about the rainstorms sent her into tears every time.
And just about the time she could get through her meal without crying, Sam and Ellie were old enough to go. And by “old enough” I mean that M and I suffered from memory loss again and thought a night with three kids crying over the lunatic monkeys beating their chests at the “pretend” storm would be a fun family memory.
Actually, that night was a family memory since the twins spent most of their second year telling anyone who would listen about the monkeys who “screamed” and “scared them.” The Rainforest Cafe Monkeys became like the Monster Under Your Bed. Neither twin would enter a darkened room because “the monkeys might be in there.”
This time, M and I had learned our lessons. We vowed NEVER again. No matter how enthralled our kids were with the outside, we would not step foot in a Rainforest Cafe until our kids could drive us there themselves.
And then, on their third birthday, Ellie announced, “WE ARE BIG KIDS NOW! WHO EAT AT THE CAFE! WITH THE MONKEYS!” Catie was on board since she still had not tasted that Volcano. Together the girls worked on Sam until he caved.
Which speaking of caves, that’s what the inside of this place looks like. A loud, dark, scary cave. You can tell by the above picture that Sam was still petrified of the life-sized gorillas. Even Catie’s thunder-phobic tendencies revisited her. But that could have been because of the surrounding tables of screaming babies, whose parents miscalculated how scary the rainforest really is for anyone under the age of, oh, thirty.
And then the seven-foot frog began visiting the tables. Did I mention that Ellie has a character aversion? She may be “bigger now,” but anything dressed up to superhuman size from the Easter Bunny to Red Robin is the stuff of her nightmares.
A frog with red eyes?
Forget about it.
We, once again, have learned our lesson.
No matter how big our kids are, the Rainforest is full of fears and tears.
And giant, demonic frogs.
