Jump On In

 Yesterday Joel Andrew and I ditched Baby James with daddy, and went to an indoor playspace by ourselves.  There are actually quite a number of indoor playspaces in the area, we happened to visit Jump On In in Portsmouth (part of a chain and there are also locations in a number of places including in Mass - Lowell, Woburn, Haverhill, even in NJ and Texas!).  We ended up here because the timing worked best for us.  It was the second time we ran into an old classmate of Mommy's from Colby.  He has an adorable little daughter, and also has a love of getting out and having fun with her too (obviously!).  While making idle chatter, he noted I had two kids.  To which I replied, "Yes, and you should keep the one for as long as possible before you go to number 2."  To which he replied, "We are due in July."  Awesome.  I am very good at stepping in it.

Anyway, back to the fun.  It was a lot of fun.  It was $10 for two hours of open bounce.  I believe you get a discount the more kids you bring.  We had to sign a waiver, and then that was it.  Take your shoes off (wear socks), leave coats and bags to the side, and literally jump on in.  I guess it gets pretty crowded, and sometimes they close the space when it is at capacity, so you can reserve your space ahead of time online.  I find this to be an awesome gimmick by the company - because really, with little kids how do you know what you are going to do days in advance?  How many times have people paid and just not shown up, I wonder?  That wasn't going to be me...  We did not reserve online and we were there at opening, and got in no problem.

Joel is under 3, so he was good to go in the under 3 jumpy house.  Pretty quickly the place filled up like you wouldn't believe, and there were 5, 7, even 10 year olds running around and jumping everywhere.  This made it a little hard on us to get into the bigger kid jumpy houses, which of course he really wanted to do.  The slides are huge and scary for Mommy!  But not my kiddo, right up and then down them.  I was very nervous for him all by himself in one of the big kid houses so I went with him each time.  But, I can see that once he is older it will basically just be me sitting on the sidelines and him running and jumping all around.  There were lots of parents there just chatting on the side.  This place should probably serve alcohol.  Ha, can you imagine?

There were 5 bouncy houses in all, most with slides, and there was an area to practice playing baseball, as well as an air hockey table.  I think you can have parties there, I might look into it for Joel Andrew's 3rd.

All in all, it was a good time.  The vending machine was probably the most educational part of the visit.  Joel got to pick a color soda, we identified the letter and the number slot it was on, found the letter and the number on the selection pad, and watched the new fangled vending machine gently lift the sods bottle and deposit it for us.  Too funny.

So, some rules if you want to go - do not bring your baby if your other child needs assistance.  Think about going with other Moms and Dads, as the kiddos are so occupied and easy to monitor (almost all the houses only have one way in and one way out, so easy to figure out where they are) so you can get some good chatting done if you do not feel like you need to assist them.  But, if you do feel like you want to go in with your kiddos, prepare to get a workout.  All that jumping and climbing is a lot of work!  Joel had a great time but after 45 minutes he even said he had enough.  I think you can buy a pass to save some money, but we will try some of the other playspaces first too just to see what one is the best.  But otherwise, I highly recommend what we did - which was to let him jump like crazy for the first 45 minutes of our day, and then drag the kiddo who is now tired on errands, and then to lunch, then home for a late nap.  Worked perfectly!  

PS - someone brought this up, I am never compensated for any of my posts.  Just like to share the places we go to, how it was and perhaps pass some tips on for you guys!