Puppet Show

The girls and I had an fun and exciting outing this morning, heading into Brookline on the green line train, in order to see a show at the Puppet Showplace Theater.  Though we boarded the crowded train at the prime work commute hour, people were kind enough to offer us their seats, so we sat three in a row across two connected seats.  Not good enough for Madeleine, unfortunately.

"Mommy!  I want to sit in my OWN seat!" she insisted, refusing to allow any part of my body to touch against her, and ABSOLUTELY refusing to sit in my lap so that she and I together could take up one entire seat.  To make things even easier, Julia couldn't deal with the idea of me standing to let her and her sister sit in the seats, so I would up with my extremely tall, nearly five-and-a-half-year-old in my lap so that my little 2.5 year-old imp could be Miss Independent and enjoy her own roomy seat.  And all was well, as Julia declared, "Mama, the reason I like sitting in your lap is I can see everything out the window EVEN BETTER!"

We arrived at the Puppet Showplace Theater with plenty of time before the show began, so we joined the crowd of preschool kids, who were on a field trip, in sitting outside the theater to enjoy the nice weather:

As the girls sat eating the snacks I had brought along, they seemed to forget that they had actually come to the puppet theater with their mother, and instead were suddenly under the impression that the preschool teacher leading the field trip was the absolute authority over everyone.  As the teacher loudly announced that she wanted all her students to stand up and get in line so that they could go inside the theater, Madeleine felt the need to loudly announce, in response, what she and Julia were doing instead: "NO, WE'RE SITTING ON THE STEPS!!"

SITTING ON THE STEPS!! and eating granola bars

Julia, on the other hand, began to freak out over the fact that I wasn't getting her into line with the other kids.  "Julia," I tried to reason with her.  "We're not part of that group.  We already went inside and got our tickets.  We have plenty of time."  "But MOM!  We're gonna MISS it!  They said it's time to go inside!" she panicked.  I finally managed to convince the girls that we actually had a half hour before the show was to begin, and that they were welcome to stay outdoors and enjoy the sunshine.

"I'm just gonna sit on the steps," Julia declared, before completely contradicting herself and leaping up to run around in circles on the sidewalk.  Madeleine immediately followed suit.  Here is what all the passersby got to witness on the sidewalk outside the various apartment buildings next to the theater:

-Both girls chasing each other in a circle hollering "Keekeereekeeeeee!  Keekeereekeee!"
-Julia flinging her arms around my legs and exclaiming "Oof!"  Madeleine instantly copying Julia's action and exclamation.
-Both girls resuming their dizzying circular running, complete with "Keekeereekeeeee!"
-Julia, then Madeleine, flopping into me and crying "Oof!"
-"Keekeereekeeeeee!  Keekeereekeeeee!"
-"Oof!"

And so forth.  After five minutes of this, I decided we should go into the puppet building and hang out in the lobby instead.

When the theater doors finally opened, the girls and I took our seats in one of the first few rows:

Before the show actually began, one of the theater owners came out with a little fuzzy pink "monster" puppet on her hand to announce the general theater rules.  And oh, how quickly Madeleine abandoned her aversion to sharing personal space with me.  As long as she was leaning against me with her hand on my leg, she was safe from the puppets and was able to enjoy the show.  (Despite the fact that the puppeteers actually stood in plain sight throughout the show, holding the puppets, making it clear that the puppets were not real.)  Seeing as Julia completely freaked out at her first puppet show because she was afraid The Very Hungry Caterpillar was going to try and eat her - AND considering that Julia wouldn't play in the backyard for a period of time after hearing the story of "Peter and the Wolf," lest a wolf appear from the back woods - Madeleine's need to sit close to me was nowhere near a truly fearful reaction.

Enjoy the show they did - Julia was old enough so that the intentionally humorous elements of the show rang hysterical for her, and spent much of the show with a huge grin on her face, often bursting into laughter along with many of the other kids.  Madeleine had her complete tv-zombie-zone-out face the entire time, as she was totally engrossed in the story and stared intently up at the puppeteers and their puppets the whole time, barely moving a muscle or wiggling at all.  When the rest of the room would burst into laughter, Madeleine would suddenly be woken out of her puppet show reverie, and would force a loud, raucous laugh just as the older kid laughter was dying down, turning her head to face the rows of kids behind us so she could be sure she was seen joining in with their laughter. 

When the show was over, the girls excitedly headed back to the train station with me, delighted at the chance to ride the green line once again:

While we waited for the train, Julia struggled to make sense of one scene in the show, during which Red Riding Hood faked a need to go to the bathroom in order to try and escape from the wolf.  Red Riding Hood's loud, explosive tooting sound effects had the room in hysterics.  However, Julia seemed puzzled about that scene afterwards, because in her utter faith that potty talk is not good, she didn't seem to understand that the tooting scene had existed for the sole purpose of making the kids laugh.

JULIA: Mama?  But WHY was Little Red Riding Hood saying that she needed to go poop and then making all those tooting sounds?
ME: Well, because she was trying to get away from the wolf, and she thought that if she pretended she had to go poop, the wolf wouldn't follow her into the bathroom.
JULIA: Yeah, but... WHY was she making those tooting sounds?
ME: Because she wanted it to sound like she was really pooping, so the wolf would keep his distance.
JULIA: Yeah, but... WHY did the wolf say "I'm gonna turn away from that mess?"

Because, Julia.  Not everyone thinks pooping time is social hour and time to shout conversations through the bathroom door.  And not everyone feels delighted to show off their poop when they're done, proudly pointing at their creation in the toilet bowl.  And the wolf, like most of us, thinks the idea of LOOKING at someone else's finished poop is totally repulsive.

Madeleine summed up the show as such: "The daddy (aka the male puppeteer) made the wolf go 'Wooooooooooo!' and the wolf wanted to take a BIG CHOMP out of the girl puppet, and the Mommy (aka the female theater owner) had a Cookie Monster!"

Yes.  That is EXACTLY what happened.