Last night was the first night and a school night, so I assumed that the traffic would be light (first mistake) and that if we arrived right when it opened at 6:30, we would have Charlie home and tucked in bed by 7:30 (second mistake).
At least dinner worked out. When I asked Charlie what he wanted for dinner (probably another mistake), first he said "hummus", then he paused and said, "no, chicken", then he paused again and said, "no, broccoli." Then he continued to ask for broccoli all the way into town -- no kidding. I'm not even sure he'd ever had broccoli before, but he was determined. I googled the menus for McAllister's Deli and Cracker Barrel on Jason's phone, but found no broccoli. Hoping to distract him, we ended up at Famulari's pizza, where Charlie watched them toss the dough and dress the pizzas (tons of fun), flirted with the cashier (even better), and enjoyed Thai Pie with broccoli!
Since he was such a good boy, Jason bought us a great big, homemade chocolate chip cookie to share, which I started divvying up before we even made it to the church (fourth mistake) -- it was gone before we even found the event...
Even thought I left the map at home, we pulled right up to the line for the Christmas Story at 6:48...just a little bit late and didn't think it looked too bad (fifth mistake). About thirty minutes and thirty feet later, we let Charlie out of his carseat to drive, climb and wreak havoc (sixth mistake), but we figured that we were barely moving and if he was stuck in his seat he would fall asleep. About thirty minutes and 100 feet after that, we strapped him back in and settled in for 15 minutes of screaming .
At 7:55 we seriously considered bailing out of line -- we had neighbors coming over at 8:30 to help move my new 400 pound treadmill to the third floor (whole other list of mistakes), and couldn't be late -- but we decided that we couldn't bale out when we could actually see donkeys!
At 8:02 we pulled into the Living Christmas Story and it was amazing -- the church really did a beautiful job of recreating the time of Christ (well - it at least matched my imagination's version), and they had all sorts of live animals.
Charlie quickly became obsessed with some horses that he saw with the Roman soldiers, so in an effort to distract him, Jason and I pointed out a donkey we saw with some Bethlehemites (seventh mistake). Once we pulled back onto Main Street at 8:16 (yes, really), Charlie started moaning, whining, yelling and crying "donkey, donkey, more donkey, donkey, blue donkey..." all the way home -- it may well have been the longest 13 minutes of our lives. Jason and I were promising to find the movie Shrek, to find pictures of donkeys online -- I was even prepared to hunt down a petting zoo -- anything to get him to stop.
We arrived home at 8:29 (just in time!), and mercifully Charlie stopped crying -- in his defense it was a good hour to hour and a half past his bedtime. He sweetly kissed Jason goodnight, and I carried him up to bed -- where I had an epiphany.
After laying him down in his crib, I rummaged through his toybox and produced Eeyore -- a blue donkey! (Success!) Despite the fact that he gave it one glance, tossed it aside and went to sleep, I consider this full redemption for the ridiculous idea that Charlie would love sitting in the car for almost two hours to drive through the Living Christmas Story at 20 months of age.
