Alex and Storytime Live!

Last year, when Alex was into the Wonder Pets!, I bought tickets to Storytime Live, a live show featuring characters from four childrens' shows: Dora the Explorer, Kai Lan, The Backyardigans, and of course, the Wonder Pets! Since then, his interest in the Wonder Pets! has waned; he's currently obsessed with Richard Scarry's Busytown characters, and he's starting to get into Thomas the Tank Engine. I wasn't sure if he would still enjoy the show, but we decided to keep our tickets.

We went to the final performance, which was at 5:00. We had really good seats near the stage; I wanted to make sure Alex could see what was going on. He got a little upset because we left his Thomas trains in the car, but he calmed down before the show started.

The show was set up very muck like the Nick Jr. channel. Two characters (Moose and Zee) came on stage to introduce each episode. The show started with Kai Lan going to a party at the Monkey King's castle in the clouds. Then the Backyardigans did a parody of Robin Hood, with the Robin Hood characters saving dirty villagers from a mayor who wanted to keep the whole town filthy. Alex really seemed to enjoy this part of the show. He got a little antsy during the intermission; I think having some snacks on hand helped. He did get pretty boisterous during the second part of the show. He didn't pay as much attention to the Wonder Pets part as I thought he would (I thought this part was a bit cheesy, as they represented the characters with big puppets controlled by onstage actors), but he seemed OK with the Dora episode. Characters from each show came on at the end to sing a version of "Shout."

I think if Alex was a bit older, he might have gotten more out of the show. We don't watch much Nick Jr., anymore, though he's seen at least three of the shows. Still, he got a kick out of some parts of the show, and it's always good to hear him laugh. We'll see if he wants to watch these shows more often or if he'll stick to his current favorites. I feel like he watches too much TV as it is, so I'd rather encourage other activities anyway.