Cavalia

Just a fun story I wanted to share…For months, billboards simply branded with the name Cavalia and a picture of a glowing white horse have taken over the city. Sometimes there would be 4 signs in a row. Most of us were trying to figure out, “What is Cavalia?” The producers of the show try to add a classy mysterious vibe to it, but it’s essentially Cirque du Soleil with horses. My niece said “I wanna see the horsies” every time she saw a billboard, which was approximately every 2 minutes while riding in the car. You know I always jokingly say kids make me itch, but since my honey bunny wanted to go, I wanted to take her. Plus, I wanted to see what all of the hype was about. My sister said my niece woke up at 6 AM asking if it was time to go see the horsies.  She told her the horses were asleep, and that she should be too! LOL!
I showed up a little before two in the afternoon. I know most of her food allergies, but Mommy aka my Big Little Sister briefed me on the asthma inhaler. We rode the Metrolink train downtown to avoid expensive downtown parking and heavy traffic. My Niece was so freaking excited. She had never been on a train before. 

When we got off the train there were all these little white seed thingys that had fallen off the trees and were covering the stairs. She has a weird phobia of fuzzy furry stuff and these little things fell into that category. She would not walk up the stairs, she didn’t want them to touch her. “That scares me!” she screamed.  I had to carry her up steep stairs to street level. We walked the easy 2 blocks to the tent where the show was to be held, carefully avoiding the scary white things.   She screamed “My horsies!” when she saw the horse posters along the fence. She wanted to hug and kiss all of them. I told her she could hug, but not kiss (yuck). It was too cute.

We had a few minutes before show time, and they warned that there was no admittance once the show began. “Do, you need to go potty?” I asked. “ Nope.” she replied. As we climbed the stairs to our seats, about half way up I asked again. She said confidently “No.” When we made it to our seats, just before we sat down, I asked one last time, “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the bathroom?” “NO!” she screamed like I was an idiot for asking again. I almost felt dumb for asking again. She did say no twice already. We sat down for 5 minutes and observed the stage and the preshow horse facts displayed on the screen. Then she said, “Auntie, I gotta go pee-pee.” “REALLY?” I exclaimed. “Yes” she calmed replied like it was no big deal. If you asked me before I would think something like that would really irritate me, but it didn’t. She’s just a little person who doesn’t know any better. I grabbed her up and ran down the stairs, across the parking lot to the trailers with the bathrooms inside. Only 5 minutes until the show was to start. To my surprise the stalls were really nice, and reminded me of a hotel bathroom, they even had wood doors and floors, and real sinks.

We finished and I raced back to our seats carrying her, while she declared that she wanted to walk. We made it back just in time. I was sweating and breathing hard after running through the parking lot and taking the stairs twice. The show started just a minute later. It was beautiful but, she couldn’t see, because she’s so short. She sat on my lap the whole show. She had a $50 seat and never sat in it… I observed other parents doing the same. I guess that’s how it works. It was such a learning experience to me. I was so glad that I brought Skittles candy to keep her entertained when she got bored. I could give them to her 1 at a time when she got antsy. She loved the show, but I think you have to be at least 13 to appreicate the work put into it. One of my favorite parts was the mirror scene. There was a lady on a horse and another lady in an identical horse. They did a whole scene as if it were a mirror image reflection of the other. I can’t imagine the training required to do that.  Intermission came at the right time because she started asking for her Mommy. She was fine after she saw the posters again and got the popcorn she requested. Later as we were nearing the grand finale, she said “Auntie, I gotta boo boo.” “What? Can you hold it for a minute” I asked. “No.” she said. “You have to go, right now?”
“Now” she reinforced. We packed up the snacks ten minutes before the end of the show for another bathroom trip. Luckily, I packed a toilet seat liner in my purse the day before. I wasn’t totally unprepared for the 3 year old experience. I considered just going home after the potty break, but then decided to walk to the front of the tent and stand to watch the end.  I explained the potty situation to the attendant and he was really nice and let us sit in the front row! We watched the last 5 minutes with falling snow, flying acrobats and running horses only a few feet away from the action. On the walk back to the train station she saw more scary white things. I fearlessly stomped on a pile of them and told her they were like flowers. She was skeptical but touched some with the tip of her shoe. She realized they weren’t harmful, and wanted to stop and stomp on all 900 million of them on the walk back. She was well behaved, no tantrums until we got off the train and she realized the day was coming to an end. She attempted to fall out on the train platform. I told her that was dangerous and that the train would run her over if she didn’t get up and that Mommy was waiting on us. She hesitantly got up and walked (if you call that walking). But as soon as we were on safe ground she fell out again. Wouldn’t that be funny as adults if we didn’t like something we just collapsed and fell to the ground moaning and complaining? LOL! I might try it…or not…. Mommy and my cousin saved the day by swooping her up from the sidewalk and carrying her to the car. Crisis averted. I had a ton of fun spending time with her and learned that you don’t ask about the bathroom, you just go. And one of the great mysteries of my Dad always annoyingly making us “try to go” even if we didn’t have to pee suddenly became crystal clear.