Movie!

Today Alton and I went to see his first movie in the theater. In the summertime, many Regal Cinemas show free family movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There is a roster of a couple dozen movies (usually a little bit older, not new releases) that are shown at 10a.m., with one G and one PG movie on offer every week. I checked the schedule at the beginning of the summer, and thought that The Muppets Take Manhattan sounded like a good G-rated pick for Alton's first movie. It has puppets, it has people, it has singing...and hey, if he didn't like it or got scared, we can just get up and leave because it's free, after all!

This morning was our date with Kermit and Alton had a great time! He gazed up at the screen through most of the movie, holding our small, unbuttered bag of popcorn firmly between his little knees and absently scolding me when I reached over to grab some (even though I think he ate about three kernels of corn the entire movie--he can't eat and watch at the same time!). He was quiet through most of the feature, occasionally piping up when something REALLY caught his attention. Each time that we saw a body of water, like the Hudson River or some lake, he would point at it and let me know that that was the water where the boats go! At one point Fozzie Bear is in a cave with other bears, and Alton excitedly proclaimed that "there's the polar bears!" (They were grizzlies, but that's okay.) Whenever someone in the movie would clap, so would Alton. He didn't even fidget very much! About 15 minutes into the movie, he inexplicably asked to take his shoes and socks off, but aside from the time at the end of the movie when he turned around in his chair to look at the faces of the kids behind us, he was content to either sit in his chair or lean on me for the whole thing. I asked him afterward if he had fun, and he said yes, and when I asked him what he liked about the movie, he said, "Animals."