Third Annual Backyard Circus!

Last week, in order to celebrate my birthday, we held a backyard circus.  What’s that, you say?  Our backyard is always a circus?  Well, you can just keep your snarky comments to yourself, Mr. Smarty-Pants Reader.

This event works thusly: we invite friends with kids over for a barbecue, and afterwards the kids put on a circus routine in the backyard before a makeshift “stage” (read: sheet clothespinned to a rope).  Costumes are makeshift, usually involving lots of swimsuits, and enthusiastically performed.  This is the first time we’ve held such an event since we moved from Pittsburgh; in years past we’ve had a dancing bear act that involved an old Winnie-the-Pooh costume, and a rather awesome Tattoo Man created with body crayons.

This year Jeffrey was a magician, using my old Fisher Price Magic Set that my parents gave me when I was seven.  He was SO EXCITED to be able to wave his wand over the little plastic dove and make its egg disappear.

Eleanor was a bareback horse rider.  She bounced on stage, did a leap across its back, and then did a flip (with my help).

William was supposed to be a strongman, with barbells Brian made by attatching black balloons to the ends of empty paper tower tubes.  We had practiced with him, teaching him to pick up a “barbell” in each hand and give a mighty grunt.  But at performance time, he must have been rather enthralled with the kids who had been acrobats and tumblers, because he simply marched up to the stage and did this:

Some kinda yoga pose?  Brian brought out the barbells, but Wimmy waved them away (“No no no!”) and went right back to his odd little position, on all fours with one leg stretched out behind him.  Everybody just about died laughing, especially when the kids who had done a juggling routine picked up the barbells and began tossing them into the air.

Perhaps next year he should be a contortionist.