Mommy Son Movie Day

I slept in today, and it was great! I rarely do that anymore. Evan can entertain himself and even get things to eat on his own and he will stay in my room too. 

We had omelets for brunch. Evan helped me clean the house, do some laundry, and some of the dishes. Daily life is just a little less stressful with only two at home. But I'm surprised at how quickly Evan can make a mess in my living room all on his own. 

We did a little Christmas shopping today, and it was so much easier than trying to go shopping with two kids. Evan would still whine to me about wanting to go home or needing "something else I can do!" but its still easier than trying to wrestle with a squirrely Careese at the same time. 

I promised Evan that we'd go watch a movie after shopping, and he seemed excited at that. But he's never been to a theater before and he doesn't actually sit through a whole movie anymore. He used to watch Finding Nemo from beginning to end without budging from his seat. But now he can barely sit through watching 20mins of his fav Blues Clues. So I was curious to see how he would fair in the theater.

We went to watch Disney's "Bolt" in the theaters. Evan was still a little small for the chairs and kept getting angry at the seat for folding up on him while he was sitting in it. I had to keep my knee on part of his seat to solve that problem. There were scenes where there was a lot of action, like car chases, or explosions, or near misses, or evil dark looking bad guys, that Evan didn't like. He'd complain saying "I don't like this show". But there were also lots of cute funny scenes of the animals, and he'd laugh a the slapstick. Part way through, as I knew he would do, he complained about wanting something else he could do. He wanted to leave, and I told him that we paid to watch the movie and we couldn't just leave to do something else. He sat back down to watch and I gave him my cell phone to play games on it. 

The climax of the movie is a scene involving fire, and I think Evan has a fear of big fires burning houses because this was not the first time he got upset watching a fire on TV. He got really upset when Bolt jumped into the burning building and he tried to get the girl out of the fire with lots of near misses from falling burning debris. He was crying and saying "I don't like this show". I explained that it was just pretend and that they would be OK in the end, and showed him how to cover his ears because it was getting a little loud in there. 

After that he enjoyed the rest of the movie, and afterwards as we were walking back to the car, he said he had fun. And when we were walking from the car to the house, he was retelling me the funny parts of the movie and laughing.

So, overall, it was a good first experience at the theater for Evan. I think next time, I'll have to check to see what's really in the movie first so I can prepare him better.