Special Circus Show

So we've been having a TIME with Max and his sleeping-- mainly getting him to go to bed in an orderly fashion and then stay in his bed through the night. It's hard because him and Jack share a room so I can't be super strict and make a big scene with his bed time or else Jack will wake up too. Plus when he comes to our bed at 3am, if I took him back to his bed, he'd scream and then we'd all be awake, yet again. So I've been lifting him into our bed and trying to make it through the next 3-4 hours as best as I could with little fingers, toes, backs, and butts all up in my sleeping bubble. This room sharing arrangement will continue until my brother moves out which is still about a month away, but Chad and I just couldn't take the sleeplessness anymore- it was making us cranky. This led to our latest adventure...

We started with some pom pom balls, an empty jar, and a new rule: Max had to go to bed without crying and stay in his bed until morning. If he did, he got to put 5 pom poms in the jar. When the jar was full, he got to go on a special date with Mommy and Daddy- no Jack!- to the circus. Well... at first, he didn't know what the circus was, so I began expelling that it was a special show with animals and clowns and bicycles and fun. Then I found a few you tube videos and pictures online and he was hooked. He started talking about "the special circus show" anytime it was nearing a sleep time.

Little did he know that I went ahead and bought tickets for the three of us, just urging him to complete this task-- I'm not sure what we would've done if it was a bust, but luckily we didn't have to find out. Between night time and nap time, Max filled his jar by Wednesday and our tickets were for Thursday... perfection!

Max loved every second of it- he had his first taste of $12 cotton candy.... (and he wasn't impressed! I never knew there was a form of sugar he didn't like!)

He transferred from lap to lap to his own seat and back again and kept his eyes on the show the whole time. It was so fun to watch him! He'd clap his little hands, smiles in amazement, point in awe, and then look at us and grin. It was a really fun moment as a parent.

Our favorite part was the elephants for sure-- they were so amazing-- who knew?? Seriously, they are so big and so smart- and even fast and pretty. And I think they have really good personalities-- I'd want to be their friend!

It was a really great Max date-- one we'll have to do again for sure!

(I took a picture of Max and Chad together but Chad has this new ruin every picture face and he did it for this picture. We'll work on it....)