Wherefore Art Thou, Gnomeo

I thought we wouldn't take Sam to see his first movie until he was a little older, but he has a really amazing attention span for a 2 year old.  When I picked him up from daycare one day last week Sam's teacher told me he was the only kid who sat and watched all of Toy Story 3.  I acted all surprised and impressed, but really I was thinking "yea, he does that at home all the time."  I couldn't have her knowing how much we let him watch tv!

In all honesty I cut the tv off quite frequently, much to the dismay of my little munchkin.  But do I think it's gonna kill him to watch a few episodes of Mickey at night or a couple of movies on the weekends?  NO.  Do I think it's gonna kill my sanity if I have to watch one more episode of Mickey?  Possibly.

 (I must admit, there was a lot of Mickey watching last week as I was totally hooked on the book "The Help."  If you haven't read it, you must, like now, before the movie comes out this summer.)

All this to say, we thought he might be ready to see a movie on the big screen so we took him to see Gnomeo and Juliet this weekend.  There was a little hiccup in our plans when I paid for the tickets and the guy handed me 3 pairs of 3-D glasses.  Hahaha, you're funny, buddy.  If you think my child is going to sit with these dumb glasses on for 2 hours, well, you're wrong.  Turns out the non-3D version wouldn't be playing for another 2 hours.  Sigh.

We had planned to go to the movie and then out to dinner.  We just changed the plan around a little....frozen yogurt from Orange Leaf first (hello heaven), a little shopping at the mall, and then a healthy dinner of popcorn and laffy taffy at the movie theater instead.  You may send my mother of the year award to...oh, never mind.

We still had some time to kill before the movie so we threw our money in the toilet to pass the time... oh, I mean we played some jumpers in the theater lobby.  Sam had fun anyways.

We finally made it into the movie.  Sam was very excited to have his own chair (even if Jon had to hold it down the entire time because he was too light to keep it from swinging back up) and even more excited to eat popcorn.  When the lights dimmed and the first preview came on, his eyes got huge and he yelled out "Whoaaaaa!"  It was quite adorable.  He paid attention for about an hour (keep in mind about 30 minutes of that was just previews) before he got antsy.  He kept dropping his toy car (on purpose) and was up and down, up and down in his chair.  The movie was cute, but I didn't think a great attention holder for kids.  We were able to stay through the whole movie though so I consider it a success.  I think next time we'll try to go in when the previews are about over and pick something I know will hold his attention better.

Did you notice his rain boots at the theater?  I put them on earlier in the day when it was raining and we were running errands.  When I tried to change his shoes for the movie, I quickly realized that would not be happening without a fight....he had fallen in LOVE with them.  He didn't take them off his feet ALL weekend.  I'm just hoping Jon didn't send him to daycare with them on today, but I'm not holding my breath.