Xiaoniu 小妞

Last week we made our annual trip to the Punkintown Fair. Despite having one more kid the lug around we all had a good time. In fact I think this year was the best so far. James and Emelia are both big enough to go on some rides and Caitlin was happy as a clam just watching all the activity.

If there was one thing that James was looking forward to, it was going on the big slide. Last year he went tandem with Mike, but this year he was able to go by himself. Emelia was unfortunately too small. The rules were no more tandem rides and if the kid is big enough to climb up the stairs then he/she can ride down. I know she could have made it up, but would have chickened out without somebody to hold her. Next year she may be big enough to do it though.

Big Slide from xiaoniu on Vimeo.

Last year I went on this ride with Emelia. This year she went with James and no adults. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that she did well. I expected her to get scared or try to climb off while it was moving, but she did great. The kids held hands and after a couple of rotations she was smiling and yelling “Hi” to me and Sue.

James and Emelia on a Ride from xiaoniu on Vimeo.

James and Emelia on a Ride from xiaoniu on Vimeo.

Caitlin was engrossed in watching all of the activity at the fair. It’s a small fair, but there is plenty of noise and stuff going on to watch for a (nearly) six month old.

James and Emelia hit up the bouncy castle for a while.

The last ride for the night was on a ride that consisted of various spinning bears. I rode with them so that they would not get hurt. There is not much holding the kids in place. The big wheel in the middle was used for spinning the bear. Emelia did well on this ride and James keep urging me to spin faster.

After rides we filled up on fair food. I had a decent tasting and reasonably priced steak sandwich. The only problem was that it was slathered in cheese sauce. I was a bit much and unexpected. If I had known I would not have ordered the cheese fries, which were also slathered in cheese. I got a month’s quota of cheese in one meal. And we also chowed down on some homemade clam chowder and fried dough. For dessert (yes, we truly had more to eat) the kids had some homemade cupcakes from the ladies auxiliary. Caitlin had a lovely bottle of formula.

We finished up eating, and walked around the rest of the place heading for the cars. I noticed that there were horses there. I grabbed the kids and went with them for a ride on the wagon. They both really enjoyed the ride. It was not very long, but it was a nice relaxing ride. The horses were huge, draft horses. When the ride was finished James was brave enough to give the horse a tentative pet. Emelia would allow us to get close to the horse, but she would not pet him. At least she was not scared and did not cry. The horses were quite big.

We usually hit up two fairs a year, Punkintown and some other. We’ve attended various fairs in New York and both Sue and my favorite is still the Dutchess County Fair. It’ll be the end of August before we go there, but by then we’ll be ready for fair time and fair food again.