First Family Movie Night
Lauren recently attended a Toy Story themed birthday party for a friend and received a small Woody action figure as a party favor. While every other kid at the party knew who he was, Lauren was clueless. Thankfully she didn’t notice that she was the only one who has not seen any of the Toy Story Movies! I decided that it is probably important for her socially at school to at least know the stories and characters in the movies that John and I decide are okay movies for a three year old, Toy Story being one of them.
Before our trip to NH I picked up a handful of books on CD at the library, one of which was Toy Story. I thought she would recognize Woody and be interested in the story. To my surprise, she wasn’t. At first she told me it was a “boy” story and she didn’t want to hear it. When I finally convinced her to listen to it she decided she just wanted to listen to it without looking at the book. Well, without the pictures, I think she had a hard time visualizing toys she wasn’t familiar with and had difficulty with the concept of the toys coming alive when the people are out of the room. She ended up just tuning it out after a few minutes.
When we returned home, coincidentally Toy Story had just arrived via Netflix. So Sunday evening we decided to hold our first Family Movie Night! This would be only the second full length movie Lauren has ever seen (we let her watch Finding Nemo a few weeks ago when she hadn’t napped well and was super crabby). I went and picked up our favorite pizza from Franklin Flatbreads. We spread a blanket on the living room floor, and we enjoyed a pizza picnic while watching Toy Story. After dinner, she got cozy with her sleeping bag and pillow.
Seeing the movie and having us there to help her understand the toys-coming-alive part was very helpful for Lauren. She has decided it is not just a “boy” story. She was totally transfixed and laughed out loud and asked several questions for clarification. Carter on the other hand, enjoyed making a mess with his pizza and running around the house whenever he got the urge! He only watched a total of about 15 minutes…in 30 second bursts! There are a handful of other movies I think are appropriate for Lauren that I think I’ll add to my Netfix que although I think we’ll keep Family Movie Night to a monthly event for now. She’s currently very interested in Cinderella since we visited her at Story Land last week but I’m not ready to go fall into the trip of “Princessville” so I think we will keep it to the non-princess Disney flicks as long as possible (Fox and the Hound, Mary Poppins, Cars, etc.).
