When I first decided to start a mom blog, I knew I needed a clever name. I enlisted the most obvious choice to help….my non-mom friend! You know, the one that you can call for a quick last minute drink. The one who hasn’t suffered from “mom brain” and can come up with something good on the spot. I needed someone to describe to me exactly what my life looks like from the outside. So after a few ideas, Stay at Home Circus was born…..not as glamorous as I thought my life looked, but it was the perfect way to describe it.
I am the ringmaster mom to this stay at home circus, the master of ceremonies, captivating the audiences with my mom voice. Instead of a top hat and coattail, I wear the less glamorous yet more functional attire; comfy yoga pants, a clean top (at least for now) and a baseball cap. Maybe even a pair of earrings for added flare.
My stay at home circus is equipped with only the best acts. The brave lion tamer calms the toddler beast during a full blown tantrum. Today’s tantrum was over peeling their whole banana when they obviously wanted it half-peeled. The juggler gracefully manuvers the daily schedule, keeping it all together even when the unexpected chainsaw potty accident gets thrown in the mix. Then there’s the clown act. Now this comic relief performance tends to begin early in the morning and retreats late in the evening. This act is performed by the tiny humans that I brought into world and, although I only have two, it feels like a dozen. This act features Meltdown the Clown, crying over milk spilled at breakfast and Clumsy the Clown who trips and falls over the mismatched oversized shoes he insisted on putting on that morning. Our eight-person van becomes a clown car stopping at every turn. The clowns get out, run around, and are shoved back in again before the next stop. Let’s not forget the snack vendors who go up and down the aisle offering pretzel sticks, sliced apples, carrots or Go-GURTs on loop throughout the day.
At the end of a long day of performances, the animals and clowns retire to their rooms silencing the circus tent that has occupied my living room. I sit on the couch and gaze at the toys, food and trash scattered around the house like popcorn underneath the grandstands. As I sit there, I realize I will do this all again tomorrow and the next day and the next day with no end in sight. But I see that this one-woman show that I have created is why I decided to join the circus in the first place.
I hope this blog will help the ringmaster extraordinaire find some fun activities to entertain their little circus clowns. My hope is to bring some laughter to other moms wrangling their own circuses and happiness to anyone dropping by with a ticket to the show.
Stay at Home Circus 