When Icey Met The Ohmies

Okay…I’m
back. My excuses for not posting: loads of sickness (who hasn’t been sniffling
or had a sniffly kid running around these past few weeks?), travel woes (though
being forced to drive home after Xmas due to Snowmageddon solved our airplane
bathroom dilemma, at least for now), and piles of other stuff to be filed under
Life Stuff kept me from the blog. Enough with the excuses, I know.

 So, my kid
is in preschool. No homework yet…per se. But we do have Person of the Week. —

 What is
Person of the Week? It is kind of self-explanatory—Tessa is the main person for
that week in her class. The rest of the class learns all about her, her life,
her family. How do they do that? Well, we provide pictures for the teachers to
put on the wall and fill out an All About Me book.

 And then
there’s Icey.

Icey the
Polar Bear. The Class mascot. Who comes home with you the weekend before her
designated week. And you are supposed to document what Icey does with your kid
in his journal. And include pictures. 

 Which means
a parent (that’s me) has to write in said journal all of the details of a typical
weekend. Something tells me a five-hour marathon of the “Busytown Mysteries,”
followed by a trip to McDonald’s, with three hours of back-to-back episodes of
“Phineas and Ferb,” while doing laundry won’t really fly.

 What to do
with Icey became an obsession of mine. I scoured the pages of what was going on
in the city the weekend that bear was going to be with us. Then I saw it. A new
kids show, downtown (thinking of the nice photo op of Icey on the subway). It
was at a perfect time at 11 (before lunch time). There was a butterfly as the
main character who dances. Tessa loves butterflies and dancing.

 It was
decided.

We were
going to The Ohmies.

 We got to
the Daryl Roth Theater and were greeted with cute little bags (that we also got
to take home) in which to put our snow-soaked boots, coats and anything else we
had in tow. Shedding our layers and walking in socks up the stairs, I was
wondering what exactly we were heading into…and if I’ll throw out my back or
sprain a knee in the process.

Entering
the main area, even my husband, the jaded theater guy, was really amazed. To
quote my kid, we “were in a whole new place!” You sit on the squishy, yet
supportive floor surrounded by a colorful and bright land where we guessed
(correctly) the Ohmies lived. I have to say, Tessa and I (and Icey) were
enthralled from the first second of the preshow fun all of the way through the
last minute of the show (it clocks in at about 55 minutes).

 The story
follows five friends (a butterfly-caterpillar sister-brother duo and their
buddies: a geeky grasshopper, a hip-hopping dog and a singing, bilingual snake)
on their quest to wake up Mr. Sun. Jason described it as the kitchy-cool of
“Pee Wee’s Playhouse” mixed with a Dora-like plot. It is totally interactive.
You talk to the characters, you sing along, you are yelling and dancing. The
tunes were catchy, we were bopping and hopping, we even did the Downward Dog
and Cobra poses.

 After
meeting the cast and taking pics with Icey, we donned our boots. I asked Tessa
if she thought it was four or five stars. She gave it resounding five stars.
Now, I’m not sure she knows what that means, but the fact that she was so into
it, completely engaged, and didn’t ask for a snack until after we had our coats
on, well, that’s a rave review from her.

 Our trip to
the theater and The Ohmies show was one of the highlights of Icey’s stay with
us. And, I admit, I left out the details of where we dined after (hint: rhymes
with Olden Marches).

The Ohmies will be releasing a CD
this spring and will be back for a longer run in May/June…we’ll be back even (though
without Icey in tow). For more info, check out their web site here.