Gabriella's First Concert

Gabriella LOVES music and we listen to music every second that we are in the car. In fact, if music is not on, she will request it by saying ("Sea-Sick" aka "Music."). We are not allowed to drive anywhere without music playing, and not just any music, HER music! For this reason, I have purchased various children's CD's so that we can at least mix it up a bit. Aside from the given choices that she LOVES (Elmo / Sesame Street, Dora, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Cedarmont Kids Toddler and Preschool Tunes) I have ventured out to find children's music artists who Gabriella and I both enjoy. Two of those artists are the Laurie Berkner Band and the Toe Jam Puppet Band. The Toe Jam Puppet Band is a local group that I discovered last summer. They have many local performances but we have never been able to attend one until today. Gabriella and I know much of their music, so it made it even more fun. Gabriella even put in a song request prior to the show beginning. She asked one of the band members for "Hot Dog" twice but both in a very, very quiet voice. They did play it for her, though!

Gabriella loved the interaction of the show. The band offers 2 performances every Monday at 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM at the Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford, MA. We had to go to the later performance because I had a meeting this morning. I was told, however, that the earlier show attracted the younger children and that the later show attracted the older children. The older children play a bit more rough than Gabriella enjoys and than I am comfortable with. At times, the band would turn off the lights (it was still "light" in there, certainly not dark) and they did silly displays on an overhead projector. For a dinosaur song, they put a dinosaur display on the projector and the kids got up screaming and running. For these children, it was all in fun. For Gabriella, though, she thought they were truly scared and got scared herself. When the lights were back on, though, she was back to interacting, dancing, and chasing the man with the bubble machine around. It is a neat band and if you ever have an opportunity to share their music with your kids or bring your kids to see them live, I would highly recommend it. For us, though, we will aim to get to the earlier shows from now on to avoid the bigger kids.

By the time the show was over, it was after 1:30 PM and Gabriella had not napped, so she was really starting to get extremely fussy and crabby and even moreso than on typical days in which she goes without a nap. We did, though, spend about an hour exploring the zoo. The zoo is very small, but I felt it was perfect for us. For me, the pluses were that it is relatively close to us, there was not tons of walking, and there were no large crowds of people. For Gabriella, the plus was that there was great variety of animals and displays in the small area and we could visit them all before her attention span faded!

They had a very small train that ran the course of the zoo and Gabriella loved it. She loves trains and she got to see all of the animals at the same time.:

Gabriella was exceptionally fussy by the time I put her in the car to go home. She fell asleep during the ride (at about 3:00 PM). I transferred her to the bed at home and she didn't wake up until 6:00 PM. However, she woke up burning up with a 102.1 fever. This certainly explains the more-than typical fussiness. It was a fun day, despite Gabriella getting sick, but now our focus moves to getting her back on the mend.