Sesame Street Live

Last night we went to see Sesame Street Live @ the RBC Center in Raleigh. Rachel, Brian, and Isaac had asked us to go awhile back, but with Madeline's timidness with big costumed characters we decided to wait until she was a little older. However, some friends of theirs decided to go, but then at the last minute had to cancel-- so we ended up going anyways-- quite unsure of how it would go.

Isaac and Madeline had been talking about Elmo and his friends all day, but the minute the lights went off and the first character hit the stage, Madeline was screaming. Here is a pictures from our seats, really you couldn't get any closer or better than this.

In order to get Madeline to stop crying, I moved up... then further up. Until these were our seats.

She stopped crying, but she refused to open her eyes, it was almost like she went comatose. She had her eyes clamped shut SO tight and had me in a death grip around the neck that I thought both of us might not make it. I kept asking her questions... do you wanna see Elmo... look there's Abby... do you see Isaac... and to all of my questions I got a quick "no." (Do not be fooled by the picture, she was NOT asleep!) I finally convinced her to go with Mark to the water fountain, one of her favorite places of ALL time... and Mark let her sit on the back. (We won't even go into germs and such... we just wanted her to actually SEE some of the show.)

She snuck a few peeks over the big cement wall, and then got brave and started watching. The humorous part about that was that they were preforming the LAST song before the intermission. So during intermission we moved back down to our stage level seats with Isaac, who had been having an absolute BLAST. When the show started back, she was a little clingy but she warmed up to them fast and what do you know, she actually enjoyed herself! She even managed not to scream when the characters walked by so close.

Here we are after the show. They shot confetti out of little cannons at the very end, Madeline called them sprinkles, so we went down on the main floor to see the mess and had our picture made at the stage.

Things got off to a rocky start, but we ended up having a blast, and I don't think Madeline will be afraid of Sesame Street characters until she goes to college... maybe just Kindergarten. Thanks to Isaac for being such a big boy and showing Madeline that Elmo and friends aren't scary and a special thanks to Patti & Jamie for the tickets-- we had a great time!

Below is a video of her transition from comatose, to water fountain watcher, to sitting back on the front row. It's quite dark at the beginning, but you get the picture.