Little House on the Prairie

This morning Emma got to go to her first play. This month, the Des Moines Playhouse is putting on a production of Little House on the Prairie, in their Children's Theater. I thought Emma would love getting to see it, considering she has been obsessed with Little House in the recent past. She loves the books--even the chapter books with no pictures! And all winter she wanted to play Little House on the Prairie all the time! She would insist that we call her Mary, and call Ashlyn, Baby Carrie. Even though Laura is the main character in many of the books, Emma said she had to be Mary, because Mary was the oldest of the sisters. And Ashlyn had to be Carrie, because she was the baby. We, of course, were Ma and Pa, and our minivan was referred to as "the covered wagon." So when I heard the Playhouse was going to be putting on this production in May, I knew I had to get a couple of tickets. It was kind of a long show--a little over an hour and a half. But Emma sat very well through it. She got very into it, too. At one point when they lost their dog, Jack, I thought Emma sounded like she might start crying. And another time, when Mary and Laura got some treats in their Christmas stockings, Emma was upset that they didn't get to eat them before the scene changed. At the end, they allowed the audience to ask questions of the cast. (It was a children's matinee, so the audience was mainly school kids.) Emma thought of a question and raised her hand to be called on. She wasn't one of the children selected to ask her question, but that's probably for the best. What she wanted to know was if she could be Mary or Laura for the next time they do this play. :)

(Emma in her Little House on the Prairie bonnet)