A while back (last summer, maybe?) Hubby and I started a tradition where every Friday is movie night. The kids get to pick a movie from redbox, we eat a fun dinner, and the Fox Family makes a tradition with lasting memories and all that sappiness. This may have been a good idea a long time ago but it has outlasted its usefulness, mostly because the selection of kids movies at redbox is limited. Quite limited. So we switched to letting them pick movies from Netflix instant download, and then we got out of it for a few weeks because of t-ball practice, but my son with a steel-trap memory reminded me Friday that it was movie night.
A little off-topic: When G was a few weeks away from turning two, the four of us met my mom, dad and sister in Oklahoma City to ride Thomas the Train. This was three and a half years ago. Well my son can still tell me that all of us rode on Thomas the first time but the second time only Nana, Auntie Leelee, he and I rode, and Uncle Todd didn’t get to come at all.
Then the other day we were in El Dorado and Little Missy asked if we could go to the park that Daddy took them to one time. “Daddy took you guys to a park here?” I asked, barely remembering the story myself. “Yeah,” G piped in, “it was after we went to McDonald’s and Little Missy got [certain specific toy from her Happy Meal] and I got [certain specific toy from his Happy Meal].” The kid remembers everything. So I asked him if he knew where the park was, because I certainly didn’t, and he started giving me directions to get there. Now he didn’t actually get us all the way to the park, but if any five year old could have, it’d be him. I don’t fault him for not being able to find a park in a semi-strange city that he’s only been to once.
So back to Friday night. G, Little Missy and I went to redbox (Daddy was on a Boys’ Night Out) and the kids picked a Super Mario Bros movie. Ugh. We came home, ate Subway, and put in the movie. Oh man, it was terrible. Well, it wasn’t actually a movie but instead lots of 15-minute episodes put onto a DVD, but it was worse than mind-numbing. When a three-year old and a five-year old lose interest in a cartoon it’s bad. At the end of one episode G looked at me and commented, “Mommy, they messed up. The swimming pole was yellow before but just now it was red.”
Apparently the story put the continuity editors to sleep, too, and they missed something my not-yet-in-kindergarten son picked up. My first reaction was pride because, dang, that kid is observant. But my second reaction was fear. How much is he picking up around me? My inconsistencies and foibles are all being catalogued in his super-efficient, never-lets-go brain.
Yikes.