The Real Elmo

Today (and only for today), I think we won the parenting award of the year. We took Jillian to see the Sesame Street Live production titled "Elmo's Healthy Heroes". I learned about this by happenstance as I was watching TV one evening and saw a commercial advertising its arrival in Rochester for one weekend only. Matt was in Winona moonlighting at the time, so I paged him right away to share this news. We immediately decided that we had to take our Elmo-loving tot to see him in person. Deep down we both thought we might be slightly crazy to do this, since a) she doesn't sit still, and b) she might be scared or hate the entire experience. We decided to risk it anyway, and I am so glad we did! It was a fantastic family day, and it happened to be the first entire day that we were all home together in nearly 3 months. Long overdue, to say the least. I took over 100 pictures of this event, mostly of Jillian's face as she sat mesmerized for the entire 1 1/2 hour show. It was such fun to experience the show through the joy in her eyes. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day.

Jilly and Daddy pose in their Elmo attire in front of the production truck (Jilly's attire is perhaps less obvious than Daddy's, but she is wearing a jumper covered with Elmo and Zoe faces, thanks to her friend Julia for passing it down!)



Once inside, Jilly was sure she had already found the "real Elmo, yeah" in the cardboard figure in front of the t-shirt stand. We had to pry her away from this several times before the show began.


Jilly took her daddy's hand to walk into the arena


A quick pose in front of the stage


Failed attempt at the only mother-daughter shot of the day. Open your eyes, Jiji, you look like your Grammy with your eyes closed!


She show soon began, and here was the look on our girl's face as the "real Elmo, yeah" came out on stage!


*I should pause here to say that our seats were incredible. I had no idea they'd be so good, but sitting in the 4th row right in the middle really made the experience come to life for us all.

Some of the characters came out into the audience during the show. Here Jilly meets Prairie Dawn. Matt is convinced Prairie Dawn had the hots for him, because she came back to see Jilly two more times.


Soaking in the sights (while clutching her Elmo spinning lights toy) with her favorite guy.



At intermission the staff brought out a ton of Elmo balloons to sell, so of course we had to have one. It was after at least 1/2 of the kids had a balloon that the staff announced that the balloons had to be put under our seats for the rest of the show. Not a popular announcement.....


..but Daddy took good care of the beloved Elmo balloon.


The show paid appropriate homage to Jilly's favorite "Elmo's World" in a second act skit.


Jilly was beside herself with joy, as you might imagine. This is my favorite picture of her from the day.


Or maybe this one is my favorite. I haven't decided.


Getting into the clapping after each number (lots of shouting "Yay!!")


Ernie made time to come meet Jillian as well.


A decent shot of most of the characters in one of the final songs. No zoom needed, we were that close!


Can you see Super Grover flying?? Because of all he learned from his Sesame Street friends about eating vegetables, brushing his teeth, taking a bath, and getting lots of rest, he was able to fly again. Hooray! Jilly really loved "Sufer frover". I hope I can use that to my advantage when getting her to try more fruits and vegetables.


Enjoying lots of confetti and streamers that fell from the ceiling at the end of the show.

We topped off the event with Jilly's favorite lunch--"cheese burber and freh fries" from Culver's. Jilly's choice, but we didn't complain. We all crashed for a big nap, and then hit the pool for a quick swim. Jilly went to bed still talking about all the details she remembered from the day (we were floored at her ability to answer questions about the show). When we talked about what we are going to do tomorrow as we always do just before we sing good night, she said , "Real Elmo, yeah!" Hmmm...guess in all our excitement and hope that she would enjoy the event, we forgot to consider that she might have a tough time understanding that this type of thing doesn't happen everyday. That is precisely why I said that we only deserve the parenting award for today at the beginning of this post!