So Lah-Lah’s Big Live Band is currently touring round Australia in celebration of their 10th birthday and we were among the lucky ones who got to see their first NSW show.
But, it wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t a story attached to this experience.
Firstly you should know that I hate driving on motorways and will often take the longer route just to avoid them. But for Lah-Lah I took the motorway. Arrived at the Castle Hill RSL feeling exhilarated by my small accomplishment and once inside the venue directed my brood to the nearest bathroom. Well an hour in the car, you know…
Thus find myself trapped inside the smallest toilet cubicle in the smallest bathroom known to man with a squirming, screaming baby strapped to my body (more lethal than explosives let me tell you), an over-excited Denny who keeps shoving her Lah-Lah doll under the door of the neighbouring stall while belting out operatic arias at the top of her voice and Noah, who’s poo has transferred itself onto my fingers while wiping. To top it off, when it’s finally my turn to pee, Noah unlocks the cubicle door exposing me to the entire line of waiting women and children.
It can’t get any worse, right? Wrong. Once inside the room where Lah-Lah and co will perform, the kids spy the merchandise stand. I at that moment realise the baby has also ‘been to the toilet’ so I haul her, bags and the Nag a Lot artists over to a corner of the room to perform a quick nappy change. While I’m juggling baby wipes, little legs and yet more poo, Denny and Noah insist on bringing items of merchandise over to me in an effort to break my resolve. ‘No’ apparently doesn’t translate into kid, so I find myself getting dragged over to the array of musical instruments, Buzz dolls and costumes après-nappy change.
Denny already has a Lah-Lah doll from a previous concert so I agree to buy Noah a Buzz doll. An excellent plan in my mind as then they can role play together with the two leading members of the band! No. This prompts a full scale meltdown from Denny. We’re talking tears streaming, fists balled, full on humiliation amid a sea of other parents and children vying for the cashiers’ attention. “I want you to get me something,” she keeps repeating in that whingey, crying way kids have perfected. Apparently my buying her Lah-Lah doll the companion Buzz doll is a logic lost on her 6yo sensibilities. Other mothers are patting my arm and giving me looks of sympathy all the while.
We’re finally seated on the floor, waiting for the concert to begin. The drama has been temporarily forgotten, so quelled with the food I’ve proffered from my bag of supplies. Phew, time to relax. No, no it is not.
These things come in threes right. Midway through the concert, Lah Lah, Buzz and the rest of the band are singing and dancing on stage and from our seats at the back Denny picks her way to the very front. Now standing beneath the stage, my giant of a 6yo thrusts her arm in the air, at the end of which is her Lah-Lah doll as she desperately tries to get Lah-Lah’s attention! “Lah-Lah, Lah-Lah! Look!” I can’t even get to the front to stop her. I decide to pretend I don’t know her. Inside I’m dying.
Do you succumb to the merchandise stand when you take your kids to shows? What tactics do you find work if not? Tell me at hadassah@threelittlehines.com.