Elmo

Well, we saw Elmo, live, along with every other preschooler in the Atlanta area.

As a crowd of parents and our preschoolers all crowded on the elevator at Phillips Arena, the jokes were flying.

One mom said, "we must all be going to the same place," and then a dad responded, "a Metallica concert," and we all laughed at our cleverness. Then the mom said, "oh those days are over; now we spend our Friday nights with Elmo." (I never spent my Friday nights at Metallica concerts, but you catch the drift.)

The excitement was high as we entered Phillips Arena, and everyone was talking about Sesame Street, with one name clearly mentioned more than the others--Elmo.

And sure enough, he was the last to come out. It was great. Bert and Ernie came first, and Ada was appropriately thrilled at the life-sized characters. As more continued to come out, she would get very excited, but each time she said, "I want melmo," and I would assure her that "melmo" was coming.

Here she is waiting. Excuse the lighting. As you can imagine, it was quite dark in there.

Once everyone was out except for Elmo, Bert looked around and said to Ernie, "aren't we missing someone?" Obviously Sesame Street knows who the preferred character is. Then we all had to yell out who we were missing, and then, there he was, the star of the show.

We were sitting in a suite area, which was so nice, especially the private bathroom, which was much used by this pregnant girl. It also allowed Ada to stand up and walk back and forth between Scott and me. There was glass directly in front of us, so Ada was able to get up and look down with no fear of an accident. It was an ideal setting, really. Again, Julie, we can't thank you enough.

Ada loved the singing, but every time the songs stopped, she would ask for more songs, and eventually, as we were nearing intermission, Ada began to say she wanted "bye-bye." We talked her into staying, paid an arm and leg for a sprite and french fries during intermission, and made it through about half of the second part of the show before we had to call it a night. I honestly wasn't sure we would make it that far.

As we were leaving with 20 minutes left in the show, we noticed that we were not the only ones leaving early. Many parents were filing out, their toddlers having gotten their fill of Elmo.

It was a definite hit, though. Ada talked about it all the way home, and we have discussed it in detail today. It will not soon be forgotten, that is for sure.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from before the show.