bad idea
so you hear "tour of a chocolate factory" and visions of willy wonka and oompa loompa's twitter through your head. at least that's what i thought...
i'd heard the local organic fair trade chocolate factory had super fun tours with lots of yummy samples. it sounded like a great way to fill an afternoon w my 75 yr old dad and the boys. wtf was i thinking. i should've listened to the little voice in my head as i walked through their doors. its the voice of the robot from lost in space repeating "danger, will robinson".
to his credit, dad did his best to keep roc distracted. and whats the best way to keep a 19 mth old entertained than to give him sample upon sample of chocolate bars. roc must've imagined this to be toddler nirvana. lolo happily obliged his requests for "mo'" accompanied by a clear gesture towards the cocoa buffet. after about 10 min of snacking the tour commenced.
at this point i'm thinking, aaah, finally some relief, my pacing to keep huggy calm could now have some purpose and the din of the machinery would mask roc's cries for more. no dice, the tour begins with a lecture in a small room with nothing to look at but a table full of chocolate and a world map pinned to the wall. they passed around more samples and gave a very informative discussion on where the beans come from and how they are processed. had i not had the boys, i would've enjoyed this part of the tour. expecting roc to sit happily on my dads lap while coming off his sugar rush was just not happening. i also didn't know how long the lecture was going to be. i stood in the back of the room holding both boys while trying to play peekaboo w/ roc in the eyewash station and trying to dissuade him from hugging his baby bro too tightly.
after what felt like FOREVER (30 minutes) we finally move onto the tour of the factory floor. this is the point where i'm still thinking this has got to get better (and the howard jones song is now running through my head to buoy my hopes). did i mention we have to wear hair nets? roc won't keep a hat on for longer than a couple minutes but i'm hoping that seeing me and the baby and his lolo wearing them will be enough to distract him from pulling off the hair net. it works for a little while but the factory line has already closed down for the day and roc's chocolate meltdown starts to escalate. besides having to wear the annoying hairnet, he's only more pissed off that we won't let him run over to the giant machinery and push the giant red and yellow buttons behind the caution tape.
the choco-meltdown got the better of us and we leave before the big reward, the tasting room. fortunately the staff takes pity on us and gives us a bunch of samples as we leave. super yummy chocolates. i'll wait until the boys are older to go again or as the staff suggested, when we get a sitter.
afterthought: in my defense, all the tours we went on when we were kids were super kid friendly and that is what i based my preconceptions on. there is an 8 yr spread between my siblings and our parents took all of us on the hershey chocolate tour, pennsylvania dutch pretzel factory, hell, even our local dairy had a tour that was kid friendly. those tours all showed the food being processed and were more of a walk through the automation process, kind of like watching your car go through the car wash. on this tour i broke a cardinal rule of parenting - know before you go.
i'd heard the local organic fair trade chocolate factory had super fun tours with lots of yummy samples. it sounded like a great way to fill an afternoon w my 75 yr old dad and the boys. wtf was i thinking. i should've listened to the little voice in my head as i walked through their doors. its the voice of the robot from lost in space repeating "danger, will robinson".
to his credit, dad did his best to keep roc distracted. and whats the best way to keep a 19 mth old entertained than to give him sample upon sample of chocolate bars. roc must've imagined this to be toddler nirvana. lolo happily obliged his requests for "mo'" accompanied by a clear gesture towards the cocoa buffet. after about 10 min of snacking the tour commenced.
at this point i'm thinking, aaah, finally some relief, my pacing to keep huggy calm could now have some purpose and the din of the machinery would mask roc's cries for more. no dice, the tour begins with a lecture in a small room with nothing to look at but a table full of chocolate and a world map pinned to the wall. they passed around more samples and gave a very informative discussion on where the beans come from and how they are processed. had i not had the boys, i would've enjoyed this part of the tour. expecting roc to sit happily on my dads lap while coming off his sugar rush was just not happening. i also didn't know how long the lecture was going to be. i stood in the back of the room holding both boys while trying to play peekaboo w/ roc in the eyewash station and trying to dissuade him from hugging his baby bro too tightly.
after what felt like FOREVER (30 minutes) we finally move onto the tour of the factory floor. this is the point where i'm still thinking this has got to get better (and the howard jones song is now running through my head to buoy my hopes). did i mention we have to wear hair nets? roc won't keep a hat on for longer than a couple minutes but i'm hoping that seeing me and the baby and his lolo wearing them will be enough to distract him from pulling off the hair net. it works for a little while but the factory line has already closed down for the day and roc's chocolate meltdown starts to escalate. besides having to wear the annoying hairnet, he's only more pissed off that we won't let him run over to the giant machinery and push the giant red and yellow buttons behind the caution tape.
the choco-meltdown got the better of us and we leave before the big reward, the tasting room. fortunately the staff takes pity on us and gives us a bunch of samples as we leave. super yummy chocolates. i'll wait until the boys are older to go again or as the staff suggested, when we get a sitter.
afterthought: in my defense, all the tours we went on when we were kids were super kid friendly and that is what i based my preconceptions on. there is an 8 yr spread between my siblings and our parents took all of us on the hershey chocolate tour, pennsylvania dutch pretzel factory, hell, even our local dairy had a tour that was kid friendly. those tours all showed the food being processed and were more of a walk through the automation process, kind of like watching your car go through the car wash. on this tour i broke a cardinal rule of parenting - know before you go.
posted by Ardel at 1:07 PM
1 Comments:
Next time I'm in town, let's take the kids on the Red Hook tour. It's awesome! Samples galore, which will make them sleepy rather than hyper. Win/win.
Post a Comment
<< Home