How to meet a Wiggle

We planned for months in advance this time. The Wiggles were coming back to Dallas. Yummy yummy.

Princess and I went to our first Wiggles concert a year ago. They – meaning the Wiggles — should prepare you for this brainwashing with a disclaimer or something. It was eye-opening to say the least. Seeing all those parents in matching Wiggles shirts skipping hand-in-hand with their brood of children as they gang-rushed the building was like a scene from the Brady Bunch. Princess watched them with curiosity and since she had just mastered walking confidently (but not that well) she struggled to keep up. She had never seen the Wiggles before, but she could sense the excitement around the theater and knew something FANTASTIC was about to happen.

It was a magical girl’s night out for the two of us. When the concert was over, Princess valiantly — and high on cotton candy — marched the whole way to the car home, sporting her new Wags the Dog hat, which she then insisted on wearing for the next three days. Daddy was a bit concerned with her attachment to it. How would we explain that her security blanket had been replaced with a brown dog hat with long flappy ears?

Anyhow. Seeing as how the first concert was such a success, and the hat continued to be, there was no way that we would miss this year’s tour stop in the Big D. But this time we had to kick it up a notch (truthfully, I wanted hip-mommy back-up from the Wiggle Crazy Freaks), so we brought along a couple of Princess’ besties from school and their virgin-Wiggle mommies to share in the fun.

If you’ve never been to an actual Wiggles concert, you may not know that Wags the Dog and Dorothy the Dinosaur have grown quite accustomed to receiving gifts from the throng of screaming fans. Bones being the preferred gift of choice by Wags and red roses by Dorothy. Of. Course.

I came unprepared to our first concert, but a neighborly mom came to our rescue and gave Princess a bundle of roses to present to Dorothy. Personally I was very touched by the gesture. I guess it was THAT obvious we were the new members to Club Wiggles. Well, this time, I was NOT going to let our crew of Mommies come unprepared. And we couldn’t settle for just the average rose and bone to toss on stage. Oh no.

EVERYONE KNOWS that the kids with the best gifts and sparkly signs get the Wiggles attention.

Sheesh.

Okay, so the flowers were ordinary. I just bought those at Michaels and tied some tulle around them. No biggie. Sorry Dorothy. You’re just going to eat them anyway.

But Wags, my dear old boy. A bone should be savored, a special treat to be enjoyed. But you need to watch your figure too – all that eating out when you are travelling has really started to show.

So no ordinary bones for Wags. Besides, the puggies would kill me if I gave their chewies away as they are not the Wiggles afficiandos that Princess is. Jealousy, rears its ugly head in many ways.

So here’s what I did for Operation Meet A Wiggle:

While I was picking up Dorothy’s roses, I grabbed a bunch of sheets of felt in brown (six), blue (one), red (one) and green (one). 29 cents each.

I drew a bone shape on a piece of cardstock and cut it out.

Next laid it on top of each of the pieces of brown felt and traced it with a Sharpie marker.

Cut out the bone shapes.

I free-handed six hearts onto the red felt and cut them out.

Next I had the hubs get down my Sizzix from the top shelf in the scrapbook dungeon and dusted it off. (Would somebody please incentivize me to use up my billion dollars of scrapbook supplies?!) I grabbed my alphabet letters and smashed out “I” in blue and “WAGS” in green six times each.

Then I got out my Aleens tacky craft glue – the kind in the brown bottle –  and glued the letters to the bones. You want to do this first.

After getting them set, I put glue on the bones so that both pieces stuck together like this. It doesn’t matter if they don’t line up the same.

Except don’t do it like that. You want to leave a hole so you can stuff them later. Which I didn’t do and now I was in trouble because I had forgotten  AARGGH.

Where are the toothpicks?! Panic while I swear the glue was setting. Got ‘em, and opened up an end on each bone like the hood of a car and let it set overnight.

The next morning I filled each bone with 4 – 5 wadded up grocery bags and put glue on the open hole and smushed it shut. I put binder clamps on it to hold it in place while it dried.

After a few hours I took off the clips and trimmed all the edges and voila! Wags was going to get some pillows for his tour bus.

Concert night came and I miraculously remembered the tickets, the roses AND the pillows for Wags and waited for that suspenseful moment when they ask for the gifts from the children. Princess was ready with her offering and walked right up to the toy soldier to give her loot. We were headed back to our seat when her bestie handed her more roses to donate to the Wiggles trash bin and Princess turned around to find another toy soldier waiting for her gifts and was, wait for it… smack-dab, face-to-knee with MURRAY THE RED WIGGLE.

I tried to get the camera into position – it was the photo op of a lifetime! Except Princess had now channeled herself into a four-month old kitten and was clawing her way up my body screaming “NO NO NO MMMOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Through her desperate smothering and flailing I tried to reason with her, “But it’s MURRAY!” The significance of this encounter was clearly interpreted in an entirely different manner in her eyes.  This reaction was on par with an invitation to sit on Santa’s lap, or anywhere remotely within half a football fields distance of him.

Thankfully Murray was a good sport about it and went on his bouncy way to find another more welcoming fan. And we sat back in our seats and yelled at Jeff to wake up and helped Anthony make fruit salad and I’m not sure what Sam’s claim to fame is other than his track skills at driving the “big” red car, but all in all it was a Wiggly good time.