Elmo Makes Music

This morning Sydney and I spent a few hours together and went to her very first concert, Elmo Makes Music.  This incredibly fun concert is making it's way through North America and is hugely popular with the preschool set!  Elmo and all of his Sesame Street friends sang and danced and put on the show of their lives!  It was amazing!

Many months ago, while trying to bribe Sydney to sleep in her own bed, I set up a rewards chart for her where she would get a sticker for each night that she spent in her own bed.  After seven nights, her reward was an Elmo puppet that she had been asking for from the toy store forever.  Well, we got to six nights and never did quite get the seventh under our belt, so for months I've had Sydney's prized Elmo puppet stashed away.  This morning seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring it out.  I got Sydney settled into her car seat and then told her I had a special surprise for her and let her unpack the Elmo puppet.

She was thrilled!  So, so happy to have him!  It was worth every ounce of strength that it took for me not to have given it to her sooner just to see her reaction this morning.

We arrived at the concert half an hour before show time.  Sydney was clutching tightly to her new Elmo puppet as we made our way up the stairs at the arena, when we were pulled over by a member of the QM/FM morning crew and given a prize for sporting Elmo today.  We got two free passes to the Disney movie "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" which is coming up in August.

The arena had a huge playzone area set up for the kids to play in while they were waiting for the show to start.  All of the favourite Sesame Street characters had different stations set up for playing and photo opportunities.  Sydney loved wandering around and seeing all of her beloved friends!

Sydney's friend Caitlin joined us at the concert today too, looking very cool in her new shades!

I was so proud of Sydney at the concert.  She really was such a good girl, was quite engaged by the whole thing and was pointing and laughing and sincerely enjoying herself.  The concert was about ninety minutes long, which was about ten minutes too long for poor Syd at this stage.  She spent the last ten minutes telling me that she was ready to go home and that she didn't want to see Elmo anymore!  I think it was all just a little overwhelming for her!

Just before we left the arena, we stopped to get a couple of souvenirs, a fabulous pink Abby t-shirt and a CD of the concert that we can enjoy in the car together.

What a fun, fun morning!  It was so neat taking Syd to her first of what I hope is many concerts to come!