Our town enjoys its annual Carols by the Lake, organised by the Lions Club. The way they attract a crowd is to invite every single group of children in the town that can sing a song or do a dance, and then watch their parents and grandparents roll up.

Bright Eyes' preschool and his sister's school choir were both asked to perform a couple of numbers, so I took all the children along to enjoy the concert.

The preschool was on first, and Bright Eyes was a star... sort of. Their first mistake was to put him near a microphone. He knows what they are, and he knows how to use them, so he spent the entire time making noises and saying 'Ssssh' into it. At one point he spontaneously introduced the next song, and he did all the 'Oys' at the right time, really loudly into the microphone at the end of the song lines.

The crowd thought he was hilarious. His sister thought he was embarrassing. I was torn between the two feelings. He was cute, sure, but I wished he could have even tried to sing along and do what everyone else was doing.

The honest truth? I think he was working the crowd! He knew they were laughing at him, and he liked the response and was angling for more.

(In the end, the excursion was a bit of a disaster. There were way too many flies and they were sticking to all of us, and Bright Eyes and his baby brother were getting more and more upset, so we left as soon as his sister's choir sang. I won't be taking them out alone again on a summer evening again for a while.)