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.