Weekend Wrap-Up

Last weekend was about 60% lovely and 40% awful (wrote about that part yesterday...). But the good parts really were great, so I can't complain.

Friday evening we took the dude to the circus for the first time. I gotta tell ya, I was really hesitant on this one. I always swore I would never take my kids to the circus, even if they really wanted to go. "Let somebody else do that," I would say. Why, you ask? ::Confession time:: I'm afraid of clowns. Nightmares about clowns. When I hear "circus," I think this:

Oh. My. God. Do not ever, for any reason, Google "scary clown." This was the tamest, I assure you.

Add to that a little anxiety, which is usually triggered by loud noises and large crowds, among other things, and you have a recipe for disaster. Not sure what came over me, but it was my idea to take Jack to the circus, and I bought the tickets.

I waited until just a few hours before to even tell the dude. As any toddler mom will tell you, put off the toddler's questions for a long as possible. Anyway, I was super excited to tell him by this time, thinking he was going to be ecstatic. Can you guess how it went??

Me: Guess where we're going tonight!!

Jack: Um...I don't know. (looking kind of excited)

Me: THE CIRCUS!!!

Jack: (looking 0.00% excited) oh. Can we just go to the store instead?

Me: But there will be elephants at the circus...

Jack: Oh ok then. Is it kind of like a store? (He likes to shop...)

"Are you excited about the circus?"

"Can you please smile like you're excited so I can take your picture?"

Once we got inside, he was a little overwhelmed but starting to get excited. He even got a pair of official circus binoclars to watch the show (or the people in the smoking section, whatever)!

Note to self(ie): Excited, antsy toddlers make for blurry selfies

So the dude was excited once we got there. He's always been a people-watcher, so that was fun enough for him. Just as the announcement was being made to quickly take your seats before the show starts, the wonderful child for whom I was attempting to face my clown-fears turned  to me and said, "Mom? Let's go home now."

A short moment later, the whole place went dark as the ring master took his place. "Mom?!? Who turned out the lights??" Not sure what the ring master was talking about...I had the giggles. Then the show started and just as we'd hoped, this happened:

The wonderment that can only be seen on the face of a child.

I've got to give props to those circus performers. They managed to hold the attention of my busy 2 year old for the better part of 2 hours! We were hardly even out of the parking lot before he asked to go back to the circus. Made my heart glad!

P.S.-The clowns weren't even scary!! To be honest, they really didn't look like clowns, aside from very minimal make-up. I'm still afraid of clowns, though, and will probably have nightmares for a week after looking up pictures of clowns for this post...