Friday, December 21, 2007

Super Heros don't get stage fright

Last night was Gryffin's first Christmas program at Day Out. Holy comedic relief, Batman! My MIL attended with us, which made Gryffin really happy. We all dropped him off in his classroom and we headed to the gym to find a seat. It was packed, packed with holiday sweater wearing women, kids and newborns, proud grandparents, the Midwestern assortment of 'the don't get out much' crowd and the 'keeping up with the Jones's' families. Before the curtain went up I spent most of the time crowd gazing. I saw women gossiping about the family in front of them, I saw men fumbling with their camcorders, I saw kids being cute and being brats. The whole time I thought how lucky I was. I had had a really awful day but at the end here I was about to enjoy the best show on earth. The best because my kid was in it.
The lights went down and some really bad country Christmas song began assaulting our ears. I can only assume there were problems wrangling that many kids and toddlers on stage because we had to listen to this song twice. When the curtains finally rose there was a slew of camera flashes and parents struggling to find their child in the mass of them. We didn't have that problem. Gryffin made himself very noticeable as soon as the first song started. Very noticeable. Basically, he was the only kid throwing imaginary Spiderman webs and Super Hero punches into the crowd. He was deflecting all the bad parental behavior in the audience and returning it with Toddler Tasers. He was jumping up and down and sending his own brand Christmas Spirit in the form of one/two punches. No, he didn't hit any of the other kids; although, he did try to take the big red bow out of the hair of the girl in front of him. I'm pretty sure that during Jingle Bells he was singing about how Batman smells and the Joker got away. It is his favorite song, ya know.
When it was over we picked up Gryffin and headed for the cookie table. Yup, I was so proud of my Super Hero that he deserved a cookie. At the cookie trough I had a hard time controlling big eyes and fast fingers as he began touching and even tasting things only to put them back on the serving platters. I quickly scooped them up in horror, hoping no one else but Dianne noticed. By the end, he had a plate piled high with sugar. Not a big deal to most parents now a days but we don't let Gryffin have a lot of sugar. This is why...
On the way home we decided to drive through the moneyed part of the town and Gryffin was talking (and singing the Batman song) the whole way. I had never heard him talk so fast or so much! When we arrived home he was literally bouncing. Tigger ain't got nothing on him. We let him stay up about an hour past his bedtime, we're dumb but we aren't stupid. Finally after wrestling him into his jammies we all cuddled on the couch with Dr Seuss's, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". I swear as I was reading I could see the sugar crash hitting. One moment he was fighting keeping his eyes open, the next he was asking questions like a riled prosecutor. I knew he wasn't long for the waking world when he started turning more than one page at a time and even closed the book before it was over. We tucked in our little Super Hero and I swear, he was snoring before we even closed the door.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gryffin ROCKS! That sounds like an awesome Christmas program. :) Sometimes it's nice to see other people's kids being horrible to realize how super blessed we are with our little super heroes.. even when they're not having a good behavior day! ;) It's always fun to people watch at events like that.. typically it's the snooty parent's kids that are being the super brats! :)