Friday, July 23, 2010

I'm kind of a horrible mom

*Seriously minor Toy Story 3 spoiler in here, FYI*

River has had such a growing love for dinosaurs lately and I've been feeding that obsession whenever possible. There are some great books out there with detailed pictures of what dinosaurs might have looked like when they roamed the earth, and there are some educational shows (like Dinosaur Train - Seriously, who was the marketing genius that came up with that one?) that he can watch to see dinos in action. But they're cartoonie, (and unrealistic if we're being picky - that T-Rex, Buddy, would have ripped his adoptive Pteranodon family to shreds in the real world). Finding a source for real-looking live-action dinosaurs was proving difficult. Finally, on a whim Thom bought Jurassic Park, thinking River could watch some of the more mild, non-T-Rex-eating-that-dude-on-the-toilet scenes. But tonight, faced with no other good options for a fun Friday night family movie we decided to just run the whole thing and see what happened.

My kid is wacko.

He screamed more in Toy Story 3 than he did watching Jurassic Park. Buzz Lightyear gets reprogrammed? AAAAAAAHHH! T-Rex munches on some lawyer? Awesome.

Now, he did get scared, but it wasn't the out of control "Turn it off! Turn it off!" scared some other movies have inspired (like Bee Movie. Bee. Movie. That kid's sense of terror is completely twisted.) In fact, he offered to "protect" me when I was too scared to watch the scene with the Velociraptors in the kitchen.

I think he was just so thrilled to finally see real-looking dinosaurs in action, he didn't care who they were eating. Since we watched to whole movie, the start of bedtime was a bit late, and wired up as he was from finally seeing his favorite creatures in the whole world alive(!) he did not go down easily. Shortly after I gave him his last hug he came out of his room with the excuse that he needed to pee. Two minutes of stalling later - and no pee - he was back in his room. Then, he came up the stairs with both of his bears and his water and sat on the top step saying he couldn't sleep. He wanted someone to come play with him.

Being the awesomely-engaged parents we are, Thom and I ignored him and continued to putter on our computers. I figured he'd get bored sitting there with no one to talk to and head back to bed. He gave a few more half-hearted attempts to get our attention, but we didn't respond. When he had been quiet for about five minutes I looked over and saw this:

I carried him downstairs to his bed and he didn't stir. I sure hope he's having sweet dino dreams (and not the kind that will have him in our bed at 2am).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ah, the dinosaur phase...one of the rites of passage. I remember it well. But I'm not buying for a minute that you're a horrible mother.

Jonathan