Topsfield Fair, Year 3.

Today was Topsfield Fair day. It was pouring rain, but I thought we had to do it, They are going to school the remainder of the week and it will get busy so it was now or never.  I brought the one umbrella for the kids, and the big umbrella for the adults, and we suited up in our best rain gear and were on our way.

You would think the Monday of the fair, with lots of rain, it would be empty.  And, it probably was empty by comparison, but there were still school groups and fair people.  You know what I mean by fair people?  Large people who do not look where they are going and feel no need to move a step to the right to allow the mom trying desprately to wrangle two kids, or just keep her sanity - go by without incident.  Fair people do not care, and they will make you or your two year old move before they will.  Argh.

Despite the Fair people, we started our strong, real strong.  We went to the petting zoo first - which by the way we will go to last next time - once James pet one animal it was really hard to convince him that none of the other animals at the fair were for petting (outside the petting zoo that was, kid has no fear and tried to pet all the cows, the horse, etc.).  Not to mention, the kid loves to stick his fingers in the cages.  No mater how many times I asked, he continued to do it.  A rooster finally pecked him in the Poultry tent, and the kid just laughed and jumped up and down with glee.  Nice.

Really, I sound like it wasn't good, it was still good at this point.  We were having fun, walking around.  Joel even suggested a chicken finger and french fry snack - well, of course Joel!  We sat at a picnic table, had our snack at 10:45 (words of diet wisdom again are needed for me) - and then watched a magic show that happened a few feet away.  After we were bored with that we saw the moo-cows (Joel Andrew's favorite, moo-cows are his friends), we went into the bee-keeping hut.  We learned how to spot a Queen bee, and tried honey sticks.  James a fan, Joel Andrew not.  Mommy indifferent.  We saw the choo-choos, the pigs. It was all good and fun.  We even found a place to buy James his own umbrella (a frog) but by then the rain had gone and we were starting to sweat in our rain gear.

There was kiddie ride time, the carosuel is a big favorite with my kids.  The other rides, I think Joel Andrew is getting slightly too big for.  It was ironic that he was asking for faster and scarier rides, when the last time we went to an amusement park we had to drag him on things.  I think he is a teenage girl sometimes.

A Food Pantry organization had cute little games for the kids - pretend to be a farmer type things where they get the eggs from the stuffed chickens in their hen house, dig for potatoes (in the sand) and pick apples (plastic ones hanging by velcro from a wooden tree).  The kids loved this one.  Nice addition there, Topsfield Fair.

Then it was lunch time.  But by now, all of the patience we all needed to deal with the umbrella situation (that was a lot of work trying to manage two boys and one duckie umbrella let me tell you).  The walking around, the saying for the bazillionth time, please do not put your fingers near the animals.    Everyone had had it.  The boys got glassy-eyed and loose.  They literally could not even stand up straight and were falling into each other.  They were falling off their lunch chairs.  It was as if they turned into a non-listening form of jelly.  They completely stopped even hearing any noise from my mouth.  I would be in James' eyes, yelling - please sit down and he would like wake up from a daze sleep and look at me like, "what do you want, lady?"  It was as if we all shut off after a morning of complete fun.  All while I was trying to eat my Polish Plate from the Polish food cart from Worcester.  This was to be epic.  And, it was christened with cranky and non-listening children.  Nothing makes Mommy madder than when she cannot enjoy her ethnic food.

So, on that note we left the fair.  Which was sad.  I wanted ice cream.  Next year.  We did get to walk by the bubble lady on the way out.  She walked us to our car practically which cheered us all up.  As I was driving out she made one huge giant bubble which I ran into and popped with my car.  All the adults cheered, Joel and James were sad I popped the bubble.