Date Night

For over a month now I've been planning to take Eli to see Toy Story 3 in the theater. This week was the first kinda-sorta-but-not-really open night. Lehr was out following up on a few car leads and we got a sitter for a few hours for Mad Dog. Eli was so excited. He was totally enthralled with everything from picking out his seats, to the speakers, to the 'commercials' before the movie. (He's been in a theater once, but it was for a short short time and there was no 'hype' around it.)

During the movie previews, Eli did tell me, "It's too loud" a few times, but I think that was in big part due to the content of a few ads. Not bad, just a little too intense for him. Eli is still such a little kid and I forget that in our day to day. But he's been exposed to such a small amount of media outside of online music concerts that it's easy to forget that he is very sensitive to climactic music, loud crashes and scary images still.

All in all he loved it. (So did I; it was GREAT!) Eli only wore the 3-D glasses about half of the time, but he totally got into the story and jokes. Several times he exploded into giggles before I even chuckled...he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He did get sad for one of his stuffed animals when we returned home for bed. Of course it is one that is packed away somewhere in our PODS unit, so there was nothing I could do for him. I think it was a combination of missing his toys and seeing the toys be separated from their owner in the movie. Eli is such a sensitive kid when it comes to seeing other people (fictional or not) sad. He couldn't bear the thought of Chaucer (his missing animal) all alone at the house. I did my best to reassure him that Clifford and a few others were there to play with him while we were moving around all summer.