October 16, 2009: At the Movies

Veronika and Ivan went to see their first movie at the theater in April—Disney's Earth (I know it was a long time ago, but I need to put it down for the record anyway). They had been watching various nature DVDs that we got from Netflix in the few months before it came out so when I saw the preview online, I thought it might be a good way to ease them into the theater-going experience. They also watched the preview with me several times and were mostly excited and only a little scared.

When the day finally came, we left Nikola with Baka for the afternoon and headed out. At the theater, we hit the concession stand and picked up some popcorn, candy and a drink, which ended up being important later on. Inside, we decided to split up the kids, Ivan with Mama and Veronika with me. Veronika was very excited and nervous and dealt with it by chattering and eating throughout the movie. I shushed and whispered answers to her questions and she plowed through the bag of popcorn. Ivan spent most of the time cuddled in Mama's arms, hiding his eyes from the screen and occasionally whimpering. In his defense, it ended up being kind of a realistic/scary nature film for kids with its share of predators and death, although not explicitly shown.

Afterwards, all was well though. They were retroactively excited about having been to see a movie, and one that they had looked forward to for so long, and talked about it for several days. I was probably even more excited than them though, because the era of seeing movies with my kids had begun. I loved that experience so much as a kid (and still do, really), I'm looking forward to going through it again and again with them.