Painful.
Yesterday was our last full day without dad, so we lived it up a bit. Lucy and Max were at school all day, so Logan and I got busy getting stuff done. Then, when they got home, we headed to the park for a bit, which didn't last long because it was cold. The plan was to go to the mall, have dinner and wait for Barney and Santa to show up. I wasn't sure what to expect, or how busy it would be, so we gave ourselves LOTS of time. They were scheduled to arrive at 7pm. We got there at 5:15.
So we ate beneath the Christmas tree. Mall food is amazing and fascinating for my kids. I'm less than thrilled.
It started to get louder and louder in the food court as it got busier and busier with kids. We decided to head back to the stage where Barney and Santa were to appear to see if it was busy yet. It was starting to fill up, so even though it was only 6:00, we decided to take a seat so we could count on a good one. We were about a 1/4 of the way back. Good seats, even if it was on the floor. So now what to do for an hour with 3 kids?
I'm glad I thought to grab their library books as we headed out the door. So we read one...and had a few onlookers from around us. Then we tried playing the animal guessing game. That lasted about 3 rounds. Every few minutes, they would ask me, "What time is it now?" "6:15", "What time is it NOW?" "6:20"...you can see how this went. At one point they surprised me and asked, "How much time left?" "35 minutes."
The mall-people gave out some fruit snacks at about 6:30...that entertained for 5 minutes. Then I went scrounging in my purse, which almost always has SOMETHING in it...I came up with a goose happy meal toy from McD's...evidence of another 'treat-night' meal, a tractor, and two containers of play-doh. Awesome. The play-doh was a hit and managed to entertain the kids for 20 minutes or more. Plus we still had one more library book to read and we were set.
Of course I was annoyed with the two 'moms' who show up 10 minutes before the show and crowd in right in front of us with their infants. (I say 'moms' because I have no idea if they were actually the parents of the children...but they held them...and I can assume they weren't there to see Barney for themselves). We had the sweet pleasure of seeing 'mom-1's' butt-crack the entire time. Thank you.
Then, it was loud, crazy, chaotic fun...the arrival of Barney. It was the mall-people's intent to get the kids into the biggest frenzy possible. It worked. Lots of screaming. Barney arrived and he sang a handful of songs. It was sweet. Logan stared wide-eyed for a while and then would tap me on the shoulder and point and say, "Barney". Yup. He finally danced near the end. My kids were pretty exhausted by the time Santa arrived. Rosie-cheeked exhaustion. Hoarse-voice exhaustion.
Then, everyone started singing, "Santa Claus is coming to town." Snow started falling from the ceiling of the mall (which turned out to be some kind of soapy bubbles being sprayed out of some machine. Basically it made for a lot of wet floor and wet coats, that we were sitting on...at one point, Max turned to me and said, "OW I got soap in my eyes!" Oh mall-people. This happened because Santa first appeared in the sky-light so all the kids were looking up while the soapy-snow fell down in their faces.
Santa appeared for all of 20 seconds to sing jingle bells and then he left for his display set up in the middle of the mall for all those crazy parents who wanted to line up for photos with Santa. I was not one of those crazy parents. We will go back to see Santa...when my kids are not exhausted from screaming Barney for 30 minutes, and from sitting on the floor for an hour and a half...and when the line is a little shorter.
We went home exhausted and I HOPED for a good night's sleep for everyone. It worked. My favourite parts? Hearing Logan say, "Ho Ho Ho", spending time with the kids doing something different, and knowing that not all aspects of the holidays will be this loud, or crazy.
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