Clowning around

Last time I wrote about how it all sometimes gets a bit much for him. I wanted to let you know that the day did considerably improve.

It was a stinking hot day and we’d been invited to a friend’s 7th birthday party at a park that has a wading pool. It’s hard to leave a house where the air conditioning is on, when you’re a bit tired and hungover and you’ve had to deal with a grumpy kid in the morning but go out we did. Luckily I’m a fairly social animal otherwise I would have stayed home. I know that my son is also a social animal and he enjoys playing with other kids.

The birthday girl’s parents had organised Pass the parcel but they didn’t organise any music so a friend and I did the singing. Luckily we saw the parcel after we’d agreed otherwise we would have done a runner as it was the biggest parcel I’ve ever seen. It fitted across four kids laps. We sang all sorts of songs and our mate clapped so we would stop singing and let a kid unwrap one of the many many layers.

It also turned out that a friend of ours was over from Sweden and he does clowning. I’d thought to take my camera along so I was able to document his act. In retrospect I wonder how appropriate it was for the young kids there but they were very entertained, and so were us adults.

He had a great case of goodies.

He’s a bit of a punk so the song he played on the ukulele was definitely not a Wiggles song.

He juggled.

He played with fire.

But then he put it out.

He told a story while playing the didgeridoo.

What’s going to happen with this balloon?

Where’s the balloon going?

Yep, he swallowed it and I’ll let you guess where he retrieved it from.

Then he played with more fire…

He finished off by making us all do the hokey pokey. This photo was taken at the end of that. It was a well deserved rest for him as he did a magnificent job.

See the whole photo set on Flickr.

It was a very pleasant afternoon sitting around in the shade and walking through the wading pool. JJ had a great time with one of the dads throwing the ball with him and playing a bit of soccer. I reminded him to say thank you and JJ did and he also said he was a good dad. The guy went home feeling very chuffed and I was pleased that JJ got some male bonding time.