This was a big weekend for our family. My wife’s birthday was on Saturday, and then of course Sunday was Father’s Day. One thing we like to do on special occasions is go to the movies. We also like to go to the movies on non-special occasions, but we have children. Ah well.
We figured we would go see a movie on my wife’s birthday as part of our birthday date, but somehow it never worked out. We did a lot of fun stuff, including a very fancy dinner at Hen of the Wood, but we had various family members visiting us for pretty much the rest of the day, so we never got out to the theater.
This led us to the decision to take the whole family out to the movies on Sunday. We had taken Ruby to several movies when she was a baby, so we figured it would be fine, but we forgot one important thing: Edward is not Ruby.
Now, first of all we let Ruby choose the movie, and she wanted to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins. We should have gone to Kung Fu Panda 2, but that’s another story. The point is, for the first 15-20 minutes of the movie, there were no penguins in it, making everyone very bored. I think a cartoon would have been a better choice. But the main problem was that Edward was bound and determined to be as naughty as possible.
To start with, he decided that he wanted to be best friends with the extremely grouchy old lady sitting in front of us. She was not really into it. Especially because Edward makes friends by pulling hair and biting heads. He also was quite fond of grabbing the back of her seat and shaking it as hard as he could. This led to Edward sitting in Mommy’s lap.
The lap thing worked for a few minutes, and he was so excited when the Cars 2 preview came on he started applauding, but soon he realized that there were people sitting behind us as well, and attempted to climb over my wife’s face to wave at them. When no one would respond, he just started yelling insistently at them. The only thing that would keep him quiet was popcorn.
Luckily, the penguins arrived on screen, and we got about half an hour of calmness until Edward rebooted his mischief. Simone took him down to the front row of the theater where he wouldn’t bother/yank anybody, which worked for another short while, but eventually she had to take him out of the theater.
Now, I wasn’t present at this next part, as I was watching penguins poop on Jim Carrey’s face, but according to my wife she set him down for a moment, at which time he took the opportunity to disappear. Apparently he decided he would much rather watch Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, and so, in about 2.3 seconds, managed to crawl over to that theater, stand up, open the closed theater door, and walk into the movie. Luckily Simone saw him going in and was able to get into the theater before he yanked on any poor unsuspecting Judy Moody fans.
So Edward did not get to watch Judy Moody, or the second half of Mr. Popper’s Penguins, although ever since we got home he has been playing with one of Ruby’s stuffed penguins, so I think it did make an impression on him. But he can forget about going to any more movies! Although Cars 2 opens next weekend, and he really liked that preview…