No Cameras Allowed

Meet Bryan! Bryan is three and a half years old, and has the best sense of humor. If you haven't gotten to see it in action, you are missing out. But Bryan is a little timid around most people so you are probably in the majority. He has a small "inner circle" of friends where he feels comfortable letting his guard down, and those lucky individuals get to meet one of the funniest toddlers this world has ever known. So many of our best lines have come from this boy. "Yook!" "I wuv you appalba!" "Tan you see my zebra?!?" "Dad, you're a girl." The list goes on and on. Maybe he pretends to be shy to make people work for his attention. Or maybe he just likes to be a pain. We don't know why he chooses to isolate himself, but Ethan and I have often worried that he misses out on so many fun things because he lets crowds of people get to him. So now that Kendall is in school all day I am trying to integrate my hilarious three year old into society! What better place to get used to chaos than at the Children's Museum?! So that's where we went. As soon as we got there he was behind my leg acting nervous. But by the time we got to the small balls that fall from the ceiling he was off on his own. It was so fun to see him let loose and have some honest to goodness fun with not only other people, but **gasp** other kids around. He tried his best to avoid them at first, but there was just no getting around the fact that the museum was crowded, and if he wanted to play he was going to have to occasionally be in the same vicinity as other children. I loved watching him find his favorite orange ball and follow it from tube to ceiling, back out onto the floor and all over the place. And then he moved on to trying to pick up as many balls as he could. He reminded me of that chubby mouse in Cinderella trying to pick up one too many pieces of corn. He would get five or six in his arms, get greedy and try for one more, and they would all go spilling out in every direction. His face was priceless and he was having so much fun! I was oh, so tempted to reach into my purse for my trusty camera to capture it all for posterity. But this little voice inside my head told me to stop trying to capture every moment on film, and try harder to live every moment in action. The camera stayed put, and even when he was swatting balls off the stream of air coming from the ground, and I wanted to film it all, I stayed right by his side and actually enjoyed the moment with him. And when he kept putting his orange ball up a down chute and it kept rolling back in his face over and over, I wanted to take a video of it to share with the world! But the camera stayed tucked away and we shared a fantastic morning together. Just the two of us, and half the toddler population of the greater Omaha area. We both had a wonderful time. And when a sweet mom next to us told me that my son had been cracking her up the whole day, I smiled knowing that Bryan might be a little closer to sharing his wonderful personality with the world!