Circus Day!

We had circus day this week, a direct result of showing Charlie some pictures of the circus day we did last year. In the process of digging up pictures, I discovered that I never blogged about it. Which is crazy, because it was awesome. Of course, at the time I had 6-month-old twins and was preparing to move back to the States, so maybe I was busy. Or tired.

Here’s a picture from last May:

It’s more than a little heart-wrenching to look at those pictures and see how much smaller they were just 18 months ago. Sigh. Anyway, we made a sheet-tent and painted their faces. Somewhere between Japan and Arizona the face paints got misplaced, but we had something better for a tent this time:

Thanks for the parachute, mom. As you can see, we’re putting it to good use. They laid down in the tent with their blankets and we watched circus-themed episodes of their favorite shows.

Another favorite on Circus Day is reading all of our Circus books. Last time we could only find two – Hocus and Pocus at the Circus and If I Ran the Circus. This time the boys extended the definition of ‘circus book’ to anything with ‘tricks’ in it.

On the left, an adorable, chubby, three-year-old Charlie is showing me his favorite part of the story – where Pocus turns into a pig. On the right, lanky five-year-old Charlie shows off a page from New Tricks I Can Do.

There was popcorn, and animal crackers, and a lot of “animal tricks” in the center ring.

We made big, soft pretzels both times. They’re really good, and not really that hard – just fiddly. This time the boys helped me roll them out and shape them.

We also watched some footage of real circuses on YouTube. (WARNING: check your videos before you show them to your children, there are a few anti-circus activists who think that the best way to convince people that all circuses abuse their animals is to show graphic videos of animal abuse labeled as a circus footage. We didn’t have much of that, just poke through the video a second before you say, ‘Hey kids, look at this.’)

We also listened to “circus music” while they were playing with their stuffed animals and doing tricks. (Just search for ‘circus calliope.’ So much fun!) They had fun walking on the ‘highwire’ (the sofa), jumping and somersaulting, attempting to juggle, and hopping on one foot.

We colored circus pictures, decoded a circus secret message, played with… circus play-doh…