Clifford the Big Red Fail

This morning, Bennett went to school as usual. I went to a work meeting downtown and hoped that I'd be done in time to join Bennett at school a little earlier than I would normally pick him up. It was a big day at ECRC - the WHOLE SCHOOL was going to go to the UB Center for the Arts to see a Clifford The Big Red Dog performance.

I hadn't told Bennett about this adventure because I didn't want to get his hopes up only to have them dashed if I couldn't make it to go with him. I made it! His face absolutely lit up when he saw me walk into the room - which was really sweet to see. As we waited for his friends to finish their lunch he showed me around his classroom and told me what they had done that day. One of the neatest things was the light table area. His teachers had filled gallon sized zipper bags with finger paint, sealed them and then taped them to the light table. The kids were then able to "paint" with their fingers on the bags to move the paint around and let the light shine through. It was very cool. Bennett named the colors, "blue, green, yellow" and called purple "pink". He got it right when I asked him to try again.

Anyway - we walked with his class to the theater and he was so well behaved! Unfortunately, when we got into the theatre and I lifted him up to see, he got a little scared. He started to cry and didn't want to sit in his own seat, so I decided to hold him and pull him to the end of a row in case we needed to leave during the show. He huddled in to my chest until the show started. I turned so that he could see the stage and he got a little interested. Enough so that I turned him all the way around so he could sit with his back to my chest, affording him a full view of the stage. He even laughed at one point, but then Clifford sneezed, which made one of the characters fall backward and do a full backward roll and that sent Bennett over the edge. We had to leave.

I was not so sad to leave because the show wasn't all that great. We heard from a friend who has a child in the four year old class that we didn't miss anything. Her daughter wanted to leave as well, not because she was scared, but because she was bored. Guess I should trust Bennett's instincts more often, eh?