May all your days be circus days

 The week before my nieces came I had a warm-up to taking care of 5 kids.  A friend of mine was going out of town and needed someone to watch her 5 year old and 2 year old sons during the day for two days while her husband was at work.  So I had kids aged 6, 5, 3, 2, and 1!  My Aunt Michele and Uncle John had extra tickets to the circus in Boise and invited us to come along.  I was seriously questioning my own sanity, but it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.  We never would have gone to the circus on our own. 

There were so many amazing things to see. The trapeze artists were spectacular.  The thing that had me on the edge of my seat, though, was the motorcycle cage.  I had seen similar things on Youtube before with one or two riders.  But in person the cage was so small!  As the two riders started riding parallel to the ground and then holding hands I involuntarily screamed!  Then the ringmaster said, "What if we added ANOTHER motorcycle?" We turned our heads in disbelief.  Out came a rather-overweight guy dressed all in blue, and Uncle John laughed and said, "Oh, it's a joke!" We thought it was one of the clowns dressed up.  But then he rode into the cage and they started going!  I was out of my seat by then, and scream/cheers kept rising from my throat.  It seemed inevitable that they would crash into each other as they did staggered loop-de-loops, barely missing each other.  Then they rode around the equator again and all three held hands.  I was speechless.  Truly amazing!

By far, the kids' favorite thing was the clowns.  There was much slapstick buffoonery that they enjoyed.  My favorite part with the clowns was when one of them brought out three stuffed panda bears and pretended to wind each of them up with a giant key in their back.  Then he would take off dancing to the music that played, expecting the panda to dance with him.  Of course, the stuffed pandas did nothing, to his consternation.  But the third panda got up and danced after him!  It was really a little dog inside a panda doll.  It would dance a few steps and then fall over and have to be wound up again.

Things went pretty well with the 5 kids.  Everyone held hands and stayed together.  The oldest boy had some money that was burning a hole in his pocket.  Even though I had given them all treats in the car so we wouldn't have to buy the crazy-expensive food in there, I changed my mind and we all got pretzels.  Because the circus was so loud we didn't get to talk to anyone very much, but it was nice to see my cousin Andrea from California and her husband and kids, as well as my cousin Lisa and her step-kids.  It had been quite a while since I'd seen Lisa since she lives in Florida.




Aunt Michele was in heaven because when we got there I passed Bellana to her.  Bellana is usually very clingy to Mommy, but the sound and the lights enthralled her and she let Aunt Michele hold her for over an hour! Uncle John is holding Andrea's baby, Lila, who is a month younger.  You can kind of see Lisa next to Uncle John.



After the circus the kid were really tired.  We had been planning to go to the dollar store to get some glow sticks since the "Light Swords" the circus was hawking were $15 a pop.  But when several of the kids didn't stay where I'd told them to sit so I could pay the parking machine I had to revoke the dollar store.  One of the kids had the most hysterical, wailing, silly tantrum I have seen in a long time.  Wow.  But I didn't change my mind.  The next day when I was babysitting again the kids actually listened to what I told them to do because they knew I would follow through on punishments!  That day they earned the privilege of the dollar store, so I took 5 kids to that paradise of plastic.  As we entered the store, the kids prepared to run free.  I pulled them all close for a little talk.  "Listen," I said as I put Bellana in the seat of one cart for Annalee to push and the 2 year old in the seat of a cart for me, "do not touch anything. If you break something I will have to buy it and then you won't get a glow stick.  Don't run around.  Stay right by me or you will get nothing."

"Hear, hear!" cheered an employee that was stocking shelves a few feet away.  "We need more parents like you!"  I looked up in surprise.  "Just sayin'," she offered.

We bought the glow sticks and got out without any major incidents.

The funniest thing that happened was that the previous day, at the circus, the ringmaster had ended the show by thanking us for coming and then saying, in her impressive announcer voice, "May all your days be circus days!"  I laughed so hard.  Yes, all my days are circus days!