Going to the movies

Most days Brady seems like a typical rough and tumble little boy who has some quirks. But it's outings like this that remind me that he does have some "special needs." We've been wanting to see "Toy Story 3", but we were wondering if we should take Henry or not. He's still a bit young to sit still through a whole movie, and we wanted to try out Brady's new kid-sized earmuffs. So, the three of us headed to the free summer movie this morning - "Horton Hears a Who" which Brady has already seen multiple times. He's been to a couple movies before and was fine as long as we kept him out of the seating area until he got used to the loud sound, so I wasn't quite expecting the difficulties I had with him since he was now armed with earmuffs.

He insisted on having the earmuffs on before even going into the theater and it still took a lot of convincing to get him to walk in as he was scared of how dark it was and how loud it might be. Then, I had to hold my hand over his eyes off and on for about 40 minutes because he was scared of things looking like they were going to come out at him. I guess I should explain this fear by telling you that we made a horrible mistake in trying to go to the 4D movie at Busch Gardens a few weeks back. After two water squirts, he was curled up in a ball screaming "make it go away." So now he's scared of things coming at him from the movie screen. Poor kid.

I kept telling him we could leave if he wanted to and watch it at home, but he said he was too scared to walk down to the door b/c he'd have to get closer to the screen. It was a mess. Towards the end, he settled in and had some Goldfish and is still claiming that he loved going to the movie theater.

And all that was the easy part of the day. As we were leaving the theater a little girl bumped into him and spilled water on him. He had to hide until she was no longer in his site. Then he kept growling very loudly in the car, which made his brother do it as well, and then he cried for his earmuffs b/c it was too loud. Then we get home and had tantrum after tantrum over how I cut his sandwich (the way he originally asked, but then he changed his mind a second too late). After 5 minutes in his room, he was able to come and eat the heart-shaped sandwiches. After lunch he was a little better, but more argumentative than normal (which is very) and hitting and screaming when I don't let him do exactly what he wants.

He's in quiet time now, playing pretty nicely, so hopefully he'll be feeling better after some downtime.

And in case you were wondering, Henry did beautifully at the movie. Sat quietly through the whole thing, not getting upset until I picked him up to leave!