"It was a strange, cool day," says Will

That it was, for sure.

The first rather odd thing we did today was take a trip down to the Hernando Courthouse Square to see some visiting performers from Cirque du Soleil. They're in Memphis to perform their Saltimbanco traveling show. I would love to have been able to go to it, but Ben's in the lovely, sunny resort town of Cleveland, OH this week, so no Saltimbanco for us.

But I digress. The troupe sent some stilt-walkers to Hernando to promote the show, and they were pretty cool. They clowned around, walked on stilts, tossed around a big balloon that all the kids in the group chased with single-minded intensity, and gave out clown noses.

Will had a blast with the balloon, and Adelaide thought the whole thing was quite curious. Today our sitter/nanny (I'm going to make up a new word for her, like "sanny" or something) was with us, which was GREAT because she stayed with Laila while I chased after Will, and I was able to take photos. It was much more fun that way.

After that, we decided to have a mommy and kids night out. We went to Chick-Fil-A, which is of course FINE dining when you have little people with you, then headed to Books-A-Million where we had dessert. I read Newsweek, Will took in another book, and Adelaide enjoyed the Little Mermaid book she found despite my best efforts to hide it from her view.

(News update: Dora is still very cool, but lemme tell you, she's all about "THE MERMAID!!!" now. So much so, in fact, that having Little Mermaid panties is actually counterproductive to potty training because she simply doesn't want to take them off to potty. *sigh*)

Anyway, we all had dessert, the kids got MORE books (it's my weakness, not a bad one in the scheme of things, I guess -- my mom was ALWAYS giving in to me when I asked for a new book, and I turned out okay...right? RIGHT?) and then we came home. After reading the ENTIRE Mermaid book, Adelaide went to sleep and Will and I geared up for our "date" -- a brand new Mythbusters and, right after it ended, a lunar eclipse.

Mythbusters was great -- it was all about McGyver -- and we loved it. After it was off we rushed outside to get a look at the eclipse.

As we sat out on the back porch, cuddled together in a blanket as the cold wind whipped around us, Will ruminated on the coolness of the eclipse.

"Too bad Adelaide isn't awake to see this," he said.

"Well, she wouldn't really understand anyway," I said. "We can tell her about it when she's older, thought."

"Like when she's 5?"

"Sure honey, when she's 5."

He paused for a moment, then turned to look at me.

"You need to write this date down so we remember," he says.

"Tell you what," I said. "I'll blog about it tonight. That way we can have it on there and find it whenever we want."

"That's a good idea..." he agreed, turning back to the sky and muttering mean things to the clouds that obscured his view of the copper moon.

So here I am, sharing our day with you all, just like I promised Will. And of course, I have the photos from Cirque on the square.