Cars 2

I'm writing this down in hopes that I'll better remember the lessons we learned today. We took Jack to the movie theater for the first time today. It was supposed to be a big deal. A mommy, daddy, Jack date and a super fun new experience for Jack. But I'm not sure that was the end result. I booked my mom to keep the twins and we planned on a matinee so as to not mess up naps or spend a complete fortune. We double checked the time online and headed to a nice theater with good popcorn. As expected there were lots of families with kids, but we got there plenty early in case the theater happened to be full and also to give us plenty of time to use the restroom and purchase popcorn. I scanned the board with movie times and saw no 10:45 listing for Cars 2. I was like, "uh, Paul. I thought you said the movie was at 10:45". No other movie times were in the very near future. But we realized from the people in front of us, from further scanning of the board and from talking to the cashier that Cars 2 in 3D was at 10:45. Irritatingly they did not have it listed correctly online. Since we had made all the arrangements and made the drive we decided to stay and watch it in 3D. This is where we made our biggest mistake. We should have gone home. I'm not a fan of 3D movies in the first place and it turns out Jack isn't either. He didn't like the glasses, though he tried. He didn't like the fuzziness without the glasses. He asked if we could go home about half way through. I'm pretty sure his head and eyes hurt (mine did!). Poor kid. We made him stay the whole movie. We probably should have just gone home. He also made approximately 10 trips to the bathroom claiming he had to poop, but never actually pooping. Some of his trips were only minutes apart. I think he liked the ramp to get there, the door he got to open and the break it gave his eyes from watching the big fuzzy movie. We also learned that we should not have come early to a movie. Had we arrived at 10:45 we might have finished all our premovie activities and still been able to view multiple previews. It was ridiculous, there were previews before they dimmed the lights and then after the lights were dimmed there was another 30 minutes of previews, many of which were not appropriate for my 3 year old! Our movie did not start until 11:15 and Jack sat pretty well through those first 30 minutes. Perhaps had we arrived late he would have sat better through the actual movie. So next time we will not watch 3D even if it means going home, we will not go to a movie on opening weekend and that way we will not feel like we have to get there early. We will however, get just as much popcorn. That, of course, was a major hit and was consumed in mass quantities.