Kung-Fu Fighting, Kung-Fu Crying

The Dad and I went out to see the new Harry Potter movie at the Davis Theater a couple of weeks ago. It was my first time in a Chicago movie theater in months, so I was unaware of the theater's Camp Hollywood program. So my outing today with The Boy and The Tot was to see Kung-Fu Panda at the Davis. The Boy had never seen it and he really enjoyed it. But most of the kids in the theater were younger--and restless. The Tot was one of these. We left the theater about 3 times during the film -- to get more Runts from the gumball dispenser, get some water from the fountain, or just to run up and down the ramp a couple of times.

In the afternoon, after naps and The Girl's return from camp, we took a trip to the library. It was nearly a successful visit. I say nearly because, of course, the security guard started to yell at me because The Tot pulled a few picture books down from the shelf while I was around the corner cleaning up the mess he'd made in the children's section. I try to instill good library manners in my children, but it's difficult to do so with 3 kids and so many constraints placed on me/us while we are the library: no strollers, we seem to be the only people who are ever shushed, must wait in line, not spin the oh-so-tempting rotating shelves, can't pull the picture books off the shelves. Seriously? Would they rather I just not use the public library?!? The security guard at Independence must think it's still 1962, when children were seen, but not heard -- even in the children's section of the darn library. Thank goodness the librarians there are all sweet as pie. The upside of the visit was a new stack of books to read at bedtime and a museum pass for a trip to MSI later this week.

E.T. Phone Home

Tonight, The Dad took The Boy and The Girl to the park to watch a Movie-in-the-Park showing of E.T. I put The Tot to bed and did laundry. At 10 p.m., however, The Girl was ready to go to bed, so I ran the block up to the park and stayed with The Boy for the last 1/2 an hour of the movie. I was in the worst mood today, but sitting in the park with my eldest child, surrounded by neighbors and friends, under a dark sky while watching a movie that I loved and remember watching in the theaters when it first came out was such a great mood-lifter. As I walked home with The Boy and some neighbors, I had a huge grin on my face.