The Nightmare that Was Elmo.

I watched Sesame Street as a child, probably longer than I would have preferred, since I spent my afternoons after school with a babysitter who cared for younger children too, so I remember a lot of Sesame Street.  I remember Elmo, though Zoe, Abby, Rosita, and Baby Bear came after my time watching was done.  That being said, before I had a child of my own, I had no idea why suddenly Elmo was the favorite.  I could probably write a whole treatise on Sesame Street, and the recent changes, some of which I like, and some of which I don't.

But none of that matters.  Because MY daughter loves Elmo.  In her limited vocabulary, (maybe 20-30 words at the moment), Elmo is spoken almost as often as Mama and Daddy.  When she gets up in the morning, the first thing she asks for is "Elmo?"  When she's eating, she wants to watch Elmo.  When she's playing, she wants to watch Elmo.  And though Elmo might seem like code for TV, as she will watch other shows, and tolerate other Sesame Street characters, she absolutely lights up when Elmo comes on screen.  She bounces and points and squeals when she sees Elmo.

So, when we found out that Sesame Street Live! was coming to Nashville, we decided to get tickets. 

I looked forward to it all week, and if Emmy could understand things like "future," or "looking forward to," I'm sure she would have too.  Alas, 18-month-old children have little sense of time, which is good, because they also have absolutely zero patience.

Tom, on the other hand, as he later admitted to me, was dreading the whole affair from the get-go.  He's the one who is constantly afraid of public temper tantrums, so the whole idea of Emmy sitting quietly in an arena full of children all watching dancing Sesame Street characters was enough to make him sweat. 

This all sounds rather ominous, doesn't it?  I don't mean it too.  For the first thirty minutes, Emmy did great.  She squirmed a bit before the show began, and after going for a quick walk with Daddy, she returned to squirm some more, so we resorted to YouTube Elmo to get through-- but FINALLY, the lights dimmed.

I pulled Emmy onto my lap, as Big Bird's voice filled the arena, and the Sesame Street theme started to play.  Emmy didn't really get it right away, but once Big Bird actually came out on stage, she realized what she was seeing. 

Thus commenced the squealing and bouncing on my lap. 

And then Elmo came out. 

Oh, boy.  At that moment, I was extremely glad that we had taken the risk and brought her to the show.  She was ecstatic.  She bounced, squealed, giggled, and climbed off my lap to dance along.  She was so excited, and it really seemed like she understood that these were her friends from the TV show, only they were really here, in person.

That lasted until the intermission at 30 minutes.  At that point, Emmy got bored.  We tried to bridge the gap with YouTube again, but she wasn't interested.  She wanted to walk, she wanted to explore, and she just couldn't understand that I couldn't let her out of my sight inside the packed dark arena.  She tried to push past me, to no avail, and got increasingly frustrated.

We should have left at that point, but I didn't want her to miss half of the show.  (I am also slightly peeved that the hour-long show had to take a break at the halfway point, which seemed to cause problems all over the arena).

We probably lasted another fifteen minutes after that.  We got up to leave, but as we neared the exit door, she started wailing, so I made Tom turn back.  We found a row of empty seats towards the back where I could stand with her on my hip, which helped some, but when she started to squirm again, arching her back (which puts me in danger of dropping her, which, of course, is her goal) I agreed to leave.  They were wrapping up the show anyway.

Tom was still sick (he had caught strep earlier in the week) and Emmy was still recovering from an ear infection, plus I'm fairly certain she's teething (a new molar erupted), so by that point, we were all exhausted.  We carried a wailing child back to the car (along with many other families similarly situated) and headed home.  Emmy was asleep inside of ten minutes.

So, it's not as if I regret taking her to the show.  I don't.  I think that if we have the opportunity to go next year, it will probably work out better, but Emmy loved it (at least half the time) and the rest of the day was worth it to watch her seeing real-live Elmo.  Maybe next year we can work it out so she gets a hug from Elmo.

Aquarium Trip (Where Tom makes fun of my inability to spell aquarium)

I can't spell aquarium (without double-checking it).  In fact, right now, I'm not even sure I've spelled it right.  I always think it should be spelled with a c. (Acquarium-- which the spell check is telling me is wrong, even as we speak.  Thank you, technology).

That being said, this weekend, we took Emmy to the Tennessee Aquarium (which I will always call the Chattanooga Aquarium, since it is in Chattanooga).  It was an ambitious trip, because it required 2 and 1/2 hours of travel to get there.  We also weren't really sure how 18-month-old Emmy would respond to the aquarium.  Would she know what she was looking at?  Would she care?

Despite a few missteps by mom and dad (meaning us, not my parents) we had an excellent time.  Well, Emmy had an excellent time.  Tom and I had an exhausting time.  As we were walking back to the car with an evidently grumpy and tuckered child, we discussed how much the trip differed from our last trip to the aquarium when we were both in college (and single, childless folk).  How much this trip seemed like work and less like leisure.  Which is pretty much the epitome of being parents for us.  Life is suddenly full of so much more work.

As to the missteps, mentioned above?  Well, we forgot to pack an extra sippy cup, so we had to wash the milk out of the one we had.  We forgot a second outfit, so when we stopped for lunch, and got ketchup all over the first outfit, we had to stop at walmart to pick up a new outfit for the inevitable aquarium pictures.  We had snacks ready to go, sitting on the kitchen table, and forgot them too.

The stop for lunch wasn't planned, either.  But Emmy got fussy about 30 minutes before we reached Chattanooga.  Plus, I knew that the lunch options at the aquarium would be overpriced, so we found an exit with a few restaurants and chose dairy queen for lunch).  Unfortunately for us, dairy queen (DAIRY queen) didn't have any milk.  (Tom harped on that for the rest of the day) They also didn't have any juice.  So, poor Emmy had to have water for lunch.  (Although, they did offer us pink hawaiian punch or something... which we politely declined).

But here's the best part of the day: We bought our tickets (ignoring the ticket seller who referred to Emmy as "him") and then we walked into the first exhibit, which was penguins.

My child, who I was afraid wouldn't be interested in the aquarium, squealed in delight and watched the penguins for 15 minutes.  I tried to pick her up and move on 3 times before she finally agreed to leave the penguin tank.  She stood there and squealed, and laughed and pointed, and bounced up and down in glee.  When we got to the gift shop, I walked her over to the stuffed animals, and she grabbed a stuffed penguin and gave it a kiss.  Needless to say, Emmy has a new stuffed animal in her bed.  We named him Tacky (after a story my mom used to read me called "Tacky the Penguin" http://amzn.to/ivBbD1).

We had a good time going through the rest of the aquarium.  Another highlight was Emmy blowing a kiss to a gecko that was out for petting by kids.  The lady holding the gecko asked Emmy if she wanted to touch the gecko, but Emmy preferred a long-distance greeting.  She blew a kiss and we moved on. (Which made me happy since I didn't want to have to use the hand sanitizer)

We didn't make it all the way through.  Even leaving the house by nine, we were pushing Emmy's naptime, and around 2 pm, we hit the wall and Emmy got squirmy, whiny and belligerent.  So we bundled her into the stroller and made our way to the exit.

Since Fayetteville is roughly an hour and 1/2 from Chattanooga (though not necessarily on the way back home) we decided to go see Grandma Watson to break up the drive home.  We visited with grandma, had dinner with her and made it home around 9 pm.  It was a long day for all of us.

But we had such a good time.

Work-ation

A work-ation is a type of vacation.  Sort of like an alternative spring break, it's a break from work (the career kind) to do work of another sort.

This memorial day weekend, I went to the Watson homestead to help Tom do some work for his mother.  We cleaned out storage sheds, filled most of a dumpster*, and burned several piles of wood and cardboard.

And contrary to what you may be thinking, I had a good time.  It really was a nice break from work.  It wasn't fun, exactly, not like a beach trip, or going to the aquarium, but it was pleasant.  It was interesting going through all the stored things (years and years of Watson family acquisitions to sort through).  And you can play mexican train dominoes anywhere.

After sorting through all the stuff in the garage and storage sheds, we also have lots of stuff for garage sales/ebay/etc.  We found a really cool poster of all the Masters of the Universe toys (which Tom and I both want to keep).  Tom's friend Chuck came yesterday and loaded his truck with stuff to take to a pawn shop: two sets of golf clubs, lots of tools... honestly I wasn't paying a lot of attention to what all he ended up taking. 

I know that I loaded my car up with some cool stuff, including an old wooden milk crate, one of Tom's Dad's "old" (still in plastic) police helmets (robin's egg blue), a crate full of Tom's old toys (to sell on ebay), another crate of coins and stamps to sell, a glass pitcher, coca cola glasses, and a dunkin donuts thermos.  Susan also gave me her set of ladies golf clubs, so now I can learn to golf.

The other nice part of our work-ation was that Emmy gets to spend the week with her grandma.  She went to the park, and gets to play in her wading pool every day, and there's the constant grandma-spoilage.  She's eaten more ice cream this week than ever before.  And grandma doesn't think I saw it, but I know there are some freezer-pops in store for her.

I had to go back to work today, but the fun of the work-ation continues for Tom, Emmy and grandma Susan.  And on Friday, I'm sure more Watson treasures will be coming home.  (I saved a whole box of those big colored Christmas lights for next Christmas).

*We got a dumpster for several reasons.  1) There is no trash pick-up in Susan's town. 2)Neither we nor Susan own a truck to haul things to the dump. Also, 3) Some of the things we threw in the dumpster would be pushing the limits of a pick-up truck. And 4) You can't burn everything.