A Night at the Theatre

On Sunday night I took the kids to Madagascar 2. When I say all the kids I mean all the kids age 11 and younger.

You would think after my last all kid movie adventure to Beverly Hills Chihuahua I would have re-thought the plan. That adventure had Emma and I walking up and down the steps. We were quickly joined by Ryan and Jenna. Good thing the steps were carpeted. However as I sat there on those steps I wished I had a can of Lysol with me. Trust me, don't let your mind wander there...

But call me a cockeyed optimist because for some reason I thought our Madagascar experience would be different.

I would be wrong.

I don't understand it. I strap those two in a car seat in the van and turn on Alvin and the Chipmunks. because I keep forgetting to bring a new movie out, and they are glued, absolutely glued to the itty bitty screen. See?

They've seen that movie countless times. But take them to the theater? Its a whole new ball game. Or movie premiere, as the case may be.

On this occasion I was prepared with food and drinks. The theater we go to here lets you BYOF&D-- bring your own food and drink. I had a backpack full of drinks, microwave popcorn and fruit snacks. That entertained Emma for about 20 minutes. After that she started getting off my lap and walking to the aisle and disappearing down the stairs. I'd let her wander a few stairs and then bring her back. After about 3-4 times of that she was not too happy and let us all know about it. I decided a trip to the bathroom was next on the agenda.

After I went to the bathroom and Emma played with the running water in the sink, we headed back to the theater. The second I sat down she made sure everyone in the room knew she didn't approve of this plan. Operation Post Washroom was no go. Onto Plan B: Wander the Hallway.

We were lucky enough to be in a theater that had long aisles on both sides. We held hands and walked all the way down one side of the theater, behind and around the other side and then back again. Then she walked up and down the lower stairs. She was staying close and I turned to watch something on the screen and the next thing I knew she had toddled off right in front of the screen.

The theater has stadium seating and had a large amount floor space in front of the front row. Emma was making her way across and by the time I noticed she was about 1/3 of the way across. Now what was I going to do?

I crawled to the edge and whispered loudly "Emma! Emma! Come here! Come back to Momma!"

But Emma was completely ignoring me and making her way across. I had no other option. I had to go too.

Its a really, really good thing I had my Starbucks Gold card, you know the one that's black and is so slimming? Yeah, that one. It was good because I then proceeded to crawl across the front floor space of the theater. Can you imagine what my booty would have looked like without it? Half the theater screaming in terror:

"OH! What is that horrible monstrosity?"

To which my children could have proudly, or not so proudly, replied. "Oh, that's just my mom's big booty."

{Yes, butt is a naughty word in our house. Mommy is making good word choices.}

So crawling all the way across, with my new, slimmer Starbucks Gold booty, I'm whispering quite loudly "Emma! Emma!" but Emma who was having too much fun to listen to me, finished her walk across the entire front of the screen (without falling down! Go Emma!) and had already started down a row towards some poor family's popcorn bucket on the floor. Thank goodness the family had a sense of humor and was laughing at us. That, or my show was better than Madagascar at that moment. I'm not above seeing the humor of my booty making its way across the bottom of Madagascar 2.

I drug Emma away and tried to wander aisles again but that had lost its luster since discovering there was food in them there aisles!

Thank goodness the movie was almost over. I finally coerced her to walk around until the movie ended.

The good news is that between the crawling and the walking I decided I didn't need to take my quarter mile run. The bad news is I have no idea when Emma will see the inside of a movie theater again. On the other hand, that's actually good news for me!