A Christmas Caroling We Go

The saga begins yesterday evening, the day before the hallowed preschool Christmas concert of 2012.

“Well it’ll make a good blog post…” his teacher intoned the moment I walked in to pick up the muppets. “I always tell the parents it’ll be better next year.”

I could not wait. I don’t care if you have an entrenched hatred of holiday tunes and Christmas pageantry – when the toddlers take the stage you drink in that adorableness. And also, mayhem is about to happen.

I picked the boys up at normal time and got ready to shepherd our little superstars over to the green room for pre-show preparation. In this particular situation the green room was red because we enjoyed some fine dining at Red Robin. After inhaling every last morsel of their meal, they inexplicably seemed less than thrilled to be stuffed into their Sunday-best sweaters and returned to school after dark.

Sans small people, we headed over to the auditorium to squish ourselves among the throngs of parents clamoring for a seat with a view. Amid the multitude of folding chairs and joyeux noel scented trees and trimming each person in the auditorium was there for a single tone-deaf tiny tot. (Or two, in my particular case.)

Each of the sub-pre-K classes would ascend the risers and perform two delightful ditties – in descending order of age. This was because the “Tiny Twos and early preschoolers” have the tendency to bolt, so parents collect them right after the show.

Guess which class the muppets are in?

Per the official program, the grand finale of the Christmas Concert 2012 was the interpretive stylings of Jingle Bells and This Little Light of Mine. (This totally explains why Destroy spent the weekend demanding, “Mommy, I NEEEEEED jingle bells.”)

So did they sing? Not really. But man did they jingle!

And what a motley crew of performers.

There was the kid who was entirely fabulous, shakin’ his little groove thang like no tomorrow, the child who had a look of extreme confusion throughout the performance akin to “Where am I? How did I get here? And why are my classmates DOING that?” Another student clearly danced to the beat of their own drum. One spent the number waving to Mom.

Destroy was focused. He shook his jingles with aplomb. Search apparently got tired halfway through though, and had a seat.

In between sets, Destroy eyed the adoring audience. Then, in true rockstar fashion, he raised his shirt to flash the audience.

Yup. That’s my son.

After the second song and dance number, the preschool director stood. “Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you! That’s our show!”

The audience erupted with applause. Because seriously – can there BE anything cuter?

I shut off my video camera.

Search dropped his pants.

Rock. Stars.

We made our way out of the stuffy auditorium, making way for the older (more polished) kinders to prepare for their show. Search and Destroy hit the crisp night air and went buck wild. Circling the quad with energy to spare, they sprinted up the stairs and down the access ramp – singing the theme song to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse at the top of their little Chronic Lung Diseased lungs.

“HOT DOG! HOT DOG! HOT DIGGITY DOG!”

Christmastime and Disney. Yup. Those are my kids.

This theatre-major-mommy is seriously proud. As this was clearly the tonight’s hottest ticket in town.

And then Destroy face-planted against the concrete planter. So we went home. (He’s fine.)

Video available on demand. (Rockstar interlude at 1:50 – 2:00)