The Circus AFTER the Circus

It was a busy day.  Everyone was up fairly early, so as soon as we did the assembly-line shower deal with the grandchildren, I took off with them to do haircuts, and Meg took off to do shopping.  The children and I did pretty well, although Ryan gets a case of the "gimme-wants" every time we are out.  The main considerations are:  strapping into car seats for the trip, wherever we are going; unstrapping and making sure that no one bolts into parking lot traffic; going through a store without any shoplifting on the part of the 3-year-old; strapping back into the car seats and hoping for the best.  Largely, the children were okay through haircuts and Mother's Day shopping...but we made four stops.  You do the math by multiplying the strapping in and unstrapping..

When we got home from our excursions, I fed the children some lunch.  Meg didn't get home until an hour before we needed to pick Gramma Judy up for the circus excursion.  Meg took a short nap.  I needed one!

We picked up Gramma Judy.  When we pulled into Pioneer Park in Mooresville to indicate that we were at a circus, Robin got very animated.  She was happy!  A circus!  Yay!  That was pretty much the beginning and the end of it.  As long as the children were eating or drinking something (Sno-Cones worked best), we could count on appropriate behavior...after that, however, things went downhill.  They were ready to leave at intermission time.  By the end of the circus, their behavior was atrocious!  We paid money to have them bounce around in the jumping castle...but when it was time for them to get out, they ignored both their parent figures AND the dude in charge.  They were out of control and horrible.  Both grandmothers and mother were wondering why we bothered!

It didn't get better on the way home.  They were egging each other on.  There was crying and screaming and cajoling and threatening...and nothing seemed to work.  We dropped poor Gramma Judy off at home.  After that, I used my best teacher voice and yelled at the children.  That seemed to settle them down, some.  They were warned that they were going straight to bed when we hit the house...and that is what we did.  No food, no treats.  A sippie-cup of milk, and done. 

I was summoned to my own bedroom twice by Robin...but both children folded pretty fast.  Robin is asleep on the floor at the foot of my bed.  Oh, well!

Tomorrow is another day.  Maybe it will be better??