The day the Shaw's got banned from Southbank!

Well today I woke up and clearly had a cerebral aneurysm as I decided it would be a good idea to take Kayne AND Bronson to the Out of the Box Festival at Southbank to go see the Gondwana performance. That was my first mistake of the day!

The day started out all good with my two angelic looking boys behaving really well. And looking all cherublike;
as you can see!! Things start to unravel as I start to pack our lunch for the day, and of course we can not agree on what we want to take, so tantrums ensues, weeping and a bit of consoling and then some compromising and 6 different lunches/snacks/drinks enough to feed an army I'm sure, we take off for the day.. My second mistake for the day!

So after countless 'Are we there yet's' a few 'this is taking tooooo long's' a toilet stop, then another toilet stop (apparently there is some unwritten law that boys and toilets are the polar opposites to girls and toilets, and can't go to the together - hence the two toilet stops!) plenty of 'we will get there when we get there's' and a few 'sit still and be quite or I'm turning the car around and going home's' thrown in for good measure, we arrive at Southbank, behind schedule (now there's are surprise!). We luckily have enough time to sit down and have some morning tea;




which was a wonderful experience. I quickly learnt that the mixture of the sugar in the fruit, the fresh air and the excitement had the same effect on these children that Rum and Coke has on normal people! I was really trying to push the fruit and the other snacks to get the boys full as our showing of Gondwana was a 12pm, so we wouldn't have lunch until 1:30pm. After much pleading, begging and outright shameful bribing the morning tea's got eaten. We were going to head off to QPAC to see what free shows and workshops were on and then going to Museum before our showing of Gondwana. As we got up to go I realised that I had left my bottle of water in the car, so I got the boys into the stroller, and went over to buy myself a bottle of water before heading off to QPAC. Mistake number 3! I turned my head for less than thirty seconds (thinking that my angles are safely and securely strapped into the stroller) I get a tap on the shoulder by one of the workers there asking me to please 'control' my children, as I turn to tell her, 'I'm sorry but my children are safely and securely strapped into this stroller" (Mistake number 4) I see the boys standing on the tables throwing things (food) at the birds, I apologised profusely and scurried to get them off (but not before taking a photo of course!);

background blacked out as there were several other children in the background and it was just easier to blackout the background then individually block all their faces!

So with 2 children screaming, 4 legs and 4 arms flailing about, and just about everyone looking at me and probably thinking that I should be giving these demon children tranquilizers, I stuff them back into the stroller (and tighten the straps) get and pay for my water and off we go, with the 2 boys talking in tongues by this stage! At this stage, ordinarily we would have just packed up and gone home, however I had already spent $54 dollars on the tickets for Gondwana which were non refundable and non transferable, so on we forged hoping that something would keep their interest for more than a second. Mistake 5 I think we are up to?

So we get to QPAC, we take part in a few workshops and shows, and quite surprisingly the ferals are now (just) passable for actual children as opposed to the spawn of satan that the appeared to be only 10 minutes earlier. Go figure. The boys enjoyed working with the animatronics, danced up a storm to 'music and movement', were intrigued by the dreamtime stories, and loved the Cook Island singing and dancing! All seemed to be going well. It was now 10:45am, so after the Cook Island show finished we decided it was time for the museum! Mistake god only knows how many we are up to now!! So we get to the Museum and there are like 150 school classes from Schools all around Queensland. They are friggen screaming, running, pushing, shoving children EVERYWHERE!! (At least my two were no longer the worst behaved!) At this stage they were both still safely strapped in the stroller. So we start to look around a bit, then apparently, in unison, they realise that they are still strapped in the stroller and want out - NOW! I try and just chat to them for a while and try and calm them down - try ans engage them in the exhibits, but the bucking and screaming were getting uncontrollable, and then Kayne (the clever little cherub) puts his foot on the wheel, so now we were out of control and promptly crashed in the dinosaur exhibit (don't have a heart attack it wasn't a 'real' one, just a foam one) but the foam blocks that made the exhibit crashed down all over the room (it was about 6ft tall) taking about 10 - 12 other children with them! So now I have the staff of the museum looking at me like I am the kryponite of all museum exhibits, as well as the angry teachers/parents of the children I unwittingly mowed down with big blocks of foam telepathically scalding me. Not making the situation any better, is my lovely boys laughing as loud as anything screeching "Let's do that again mum - that was awesome!!" So assuming that less blood would be shed if I let them out of the stroller, I made the boys help me and the museum staff stack the blocks back up, until the staff member realised that we were actually more of a hindrance than a help and let us off our penance early! So we (very) quickly finish that particular exhibit and left the museum tour for another day. With the boys acting like wild animals and having perfected the 'divide and conquer' strategy I was starting to feel more like a Zoo keeper than a mother. So I finally manage to lasso both children back into the stroller, and off we go back to QPAC to watch some more shows!

So we get back to the courtyard of QPAC, and there is just some folk music playing, so I decided to leave the boys locked, I mean strapped into the stroller, and give them some more to eat to make sure that they are fully fed for the show. I also decided to that it would be a good idea to let them have a play at the playground before going into the show, so that they blow some steam. So the time came for our showing for Gondwana. Yay!! So we get there, and the boys seem like they are high on speed, I get them settled in our seats (which are thankfully right on the end and right next to an exit!).




After a somewhat rocky start with Kayne telling another child that he is a 'sooky, sooky, la la'(on the top of his voice mind you) when he cried and had to be removed from the theater. After that they boys were really well behaved, they absolutely LOVED the show, they were enthralled. The show was absolutely AWESOME, the puppets were sooo real!! It was so worth the money and the hassle to see it. I throughly recommend anyone seeing it! So it's time to leave and apparently the boys can't wait to get to the lunch, and push and shove like rabid dogs! We weren't allowed to take strollers into the theater! BIG MISTAKE! Can you imagine 100's of hungry, tired, excited toddlers are racing to get out??

Anyway, off we go to the park to have our lunch. And wait for the start of the Thursday Island concert. The boys heartily eat their lunch and very politely ask if they can go and sit with the other kids at the front of the stage. I made the promise they would behave, and I could see where they were sitting and was only about 5mts away. They are really well behaved and are just sitting next to each other, either talking to each other, or taking to the kids around them. The concert starts, the kids all get up and start dancing, and of course Kayne and Bronson turn crowd into a Mosh Pit, I have expect to some toddler crowd surfing break out any minute! So anyway, after 2 songs, something happens with the amplifiers and you suddenly couldn't hear a thing. So the concert stops, and of course the crowd goes crazy, and fearing a toddler riot, ala the Simpsons episode with the Roofie Concert, I bail my two up and get out of their quick smart! And decide that enough is enough and it's time to go home. Both the boys are tired as all hell, cranky, and blergh, so I think it's best for all!

So there you go, that's our very eventful day at Southbank, and why our photo's are now up at every part of Southbank and the Museum to make sure that our family never is allowed to entered their parklands again!