CARS 2. I'm glad I didn't take my 3 year-old.

     This weekend I took my five-year-old and his buddy to see CARS 2.  Part way through the film I thought, "Is my kid going to have nightmares tonight?" 

     You may have already heard that the film is a bit mature for younger audiences.  A bit? I think some of it went over my head.  It has an espionage sub-plot which is much too advanced for your average McQueen fan.  And here's the other problem.  There is a lot of shooting going on, and (spoiler alert) at one point the "bad guys" are trying to kill McQueen with a bomb planted on his good buddy Mater.  I am not joking, people.

     The film is somewhat redeemed by its underlying message about the importance of alternative fuels and protecting the environment.  But this is not what my kid took from the show. 

     How do I know what Noah took from it?  Well, we decided to do a little journal about the movie, as a way for me to keep him doing some level of academic work through the summer.  On his first page he drew a car with a gun attached to it, and asked me how to write, "The cars could kill other cars."   I wondered to myself how I could make this sentence a little less violent. "How about, "The cars could SHOOT other cars,"" I suggested.  Isn't that SO much better?  Okay, so my husband has pointed out that it is not.  I might as well have suggested the other verbs that went through my head, like "maim" and "wound".   So now the first page of Noah's summer journal has something about shooting stuff on it.  Great.  Thank you , CARS 2.

     I have a few questions. To what extent should kids be exposed to this kind of stuff?  Our generation grew up playing with guns.  Does play any part in how we turned out?  I think that the kids are going to get exposed to this in some way, so does letting them watch a movie that includes this make me a bad parent?  Is gun-play almost like Barbies? ( Maybe not the greatest image but something that we can't escape?  Part of a child's cultural canon?) What do you think?  Is my kid going to be a better citizen if I don't let him use squirt guns?  Where should we draw the line?

     I'm not sure where I stand on all of this.  I'm just hoping they don't actually kill McQueen in CARS 3. I suppose they won't.  He is probably like the Jack Bauer of the Cars world.  I wonder what kind of near-death experience they can conjur up for him next time.  Something to look forward to, I suppose.

Fun in the Sun

I had some blog-worthy moments today so I thought I’d share.  I am realizing that having routines like school and nursery school ripped away for the summer is a bit traumatic for me.  I’m spoiled really, because Dave is a teacher, and usually home for the summer.  The past two summers he has been doing a course in July and it has really screwed me over.

The sad part is that today was only Day 2 of Dave’s course, and I already got to the following scenario.  After the children running rampant around me all day, I was feeling a little “fed up”.  (That’s kind of any 80s type of phrase, isn’t it?  Kind of like “half-assed”, which is one that I have yet to use on my kids.  But I digress.)  So today, instead of crying or something, I resorted to going into the front hall washroom and letting out a giant “AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH”.  I wouldn’t call it a scream.  It was MAYBE a yell.  An expression of frustration, anyway.  I don’t know exactly why I went into the bathroom to do it.  They could still hear me, and I’m sure that the people walking by out front could too.  Anyway, I want you to guess what my kids did.   Did you guess?  Did you guess LAUGH????  They laughed hysterically, Iike they were thinking,  “Ha ha!  We have finally pushed her over the edge.  She is so funny, and has absolutely no control over us….ha ha!”   They were not at all traumatized.  Not that I wanted them to be traumatized but I didn’t think that when they witnessed their mother get pushed to this limit that they would erupt into gales of laughter, and it would only make their day even better. 

So what did I do next?  I carried on and took all three of them to the Zoo Splash pad.  You are wondering what is wrong with me, I know.  It’s just that I really need to occupy the hours between 2:00 and 5:00.  I will resort to anything.   Have you ever done the Zoo Splash pad with a 3:1 ratio?  Have you ever thought about it?  Maybe don’t do it.  It was actually not tooooo bad, but at one point, as I was preoccupied with Maia crawling around in the water trying to eat used bandaids, I looked over and saw Emma standing with her mouth wide open in front of a spraying frog, trying to guzzle down as much of the splash pad water as she could.  As this was happening, Noah yelled, “Is this water CLEAN???”  Um, I don’t think it is too clean.  But what can you do.  She was occupied between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00 and that is all I was looking for.

My day with the kids just ended with Maia nuzzled into me on the rocking chair, with her cheek pressed against mine.  That is just the best feeling in the world.  It really makes up for the chaos.  Good thing Dave has had a vasectomy because those kind of moments make me think I want another one.  See, now you are really wondering what is wrong with me.  Or maybe this has happened to  you.   This is probably how some people end up with 18 kids.  Imagine going to the Zoo Spash pad with an 18:1 ratio.  Now THAT would be difficult.