Movies & Kids

I'm starting to notice a problem here....either I've turned into a certain ex-Vice President's wife, or something is very wrong with perception these days in general.

Last year my husband and I could hardly stand the wait for the newest Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull movie. We were really excited about seeing the movie, as it was one of our favorite action series as children ourselves. The day had arrived, and after having watched the prior movies with our kids to get back up to speed and checking the ratings for the latest, off we went.

In spite of the ratings for this movie being PG-13, we decided to take our 9-year-old, 11-year-old, and 3-year-old anyway. We knew the 3-year-old would probably cause us to miss bits here and there taking turns at walking around with him when necessary, it being his first movie and all and due to the fact that it wouldn't remotely hold his interest, but......I was really ticked off before the movie ever even started.

This movie was rated PG-13, but the notations indicated the movie contained adventure violence and scary images only. Based on our own personal experiences with Indiana Jones, we knew our older 2 could handle this. But the previews/trailers for the movies prior to our movie beginning is what had me completely floored, mouth on the floor and all. My children had to view a trailer for Dirty, Sexy Money that showed lingerie-clad women, 1 seductively throwing herself down onto a bed, and even girl-on-girl action.

I returned home furious enough to rip off a letter, but I was unsuccessful in determining just who it was should be the recipient.

Fast forward to last week when my husband decided to take our 9-year-old and 11-year-old to see the new Transformers Revenge of the Fallen movie......Again, PG-13, but based on the first movie, the Burger King Kids Meal Toys with children our children's ages, he never checked the cautions for the movie. He bought the tickets on a whim as a special late-night treat for the older 2 while already at the movies watching Up with them. It is imperative that you take note of what the notations actually are for this one, which are: Intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.

My husband came home in shock and embarrassed that he had even taken our children. He kept repeating, "They have kids their (our children) ages playing with them as kid meal toys!" We can handle a swear word here and there, but this apparently went above and beyond to the point it should have been labeled with "excessive language." He said he kept waiting for people to stone him and reprimand him while walking out with our kids that he had dared do such a thing. At least one of the trailers was appropriate, a new Toy Story movie coming up.

Brief notes about what he shared with me: Excessive language, and really overly so, not just your standard "shit," "hell," or "damn." Name calling using "pussy." A transformer climbing with wrecking ball-type of balls hanging between his legs clanging together AS his actual "balls." A "hot" girl landing with her head in the crotch of a guy and him picking up his head, looking down, and saying "Beautiful." A little robot humping the leg of a "hot" girl. A "hot" girl coming onto Shia LaBeouf's character trying to get him to "do it," and them showing her panties under her very short skirt while lying atop him so that you could get the full effect of her tail appearing as she transformed. That's about all I can recall off the top of my head at the moment, having not seen it for myself, but if my husband, Mr. Potty Mouth himself, had a problem with it, then I venture to say it must be "out there."

This is a questionable movie for even 13-year-olds in my opinion. It has been marketed to children even younger, as you would be hard pressed to find a 13-year-old or older person playing with the toys or eating the kid meals in which they are placed. Something has gone way out of whack here.

While I'm at it, there was another movie last year I believe it was....Hancock (which we did not let our children see thankfully). What a great opportunity for kids just missed out on. Had they made the character not drunk (which can offend some people) and instead had him lacking for other reasons, had they chosen another word as the word that set him off (only because they had children saying it), and had they completely cut out the scene where he takes home a woman from a bar and ejaculates through the roof of his trailer, they could have had a very good modern and realistic superhero movie on their hands in my opinion.

I also took my daughter, at my husband's recommendation, to see Marley & Me, which was inappropriate in my opinion for a 9-year-old. It didn't indicate in any way that the movie had suggestive sexual scenes that I found myself covering my daughter's eyes and ears for.

It really is such a shame.

Summer Crazies....

This is how I refer to it. Even though school is still in, when the weather warms, my home becomes the child magnet. It seems much more difficult with a 3-1/2-year-old however I have to say. He wants so badly to play with all the bigger kids and to keep up.

Back when my first two, now 9 and 11, were this young, my home was completely child proofed. Not so any longer. It is to a certain degree--to keep him out of harm's way--but I guess catching his antics and behind-the-scenes sneakiness is much more difficult with everyone running in different directions.

Lately, he's been giving me a real run for my money, so much so, I haven't blogged in a while. It's been compounded by the end-of-the-school-year madness such as helper breakfasts, VIP lunches, field trips, softball season, etc.

Last week, my youngster walked around the corner with a freshly cut strawberry in his hand proudly holding it up with one hand while holding out the empty hand and wiggling the fingers announcing, "See mom, I didn't cut my fingers off!"

I have to admit he did a really great job at it, but once discovering his hands were in fact still intact to find the large serated bread knife left next to that stawberry top, I set off trying to locate a new container in which to put the sharp knives atop the fridge like the old days. One of the drawbacks of having much older siblings to watch and to learn from and to having a 3-year-old the size of a 6-year-old. He can reach everything.

This week he has become more determined than ever to go potty all by himself. He comes out and announces that he has done so. I want to encourage him to continue, but.....he won't cave on calling for backup to wipe after a poopie. @@

He has cleaned all of his dresser drawers out 3 times in the last 10 days or so in order to locate a hoodie sweatshirt and jeans or sweats to wear. He has suddenly developed a true love of these clothing items, regardless of how hot it is now outside. I have now hidden the sweatshirts and he has now moved onto long sleeve shirts. Don't know what I'm gonna do with him, other than continue to force him to help me clean it all up.

One day last week, he announced that he pee-peed on the potty and poo-poo'd too just as proud as can be. I asked him who wiped his bum to which he replied, "Nobody." I took him into the bathroom explaining that bums always need to be wiped after a poo-poo because some gets stuck in the crack. I said, "Here lemme show ya. Bend over and touch your toes." He does this and I wipe. I then show him the remnants left behind on the paper to which he dramatically and disgustedly yells, "Aaaaackkkkkk! Don't show me that again, K?!"

Now, this week, after a dresser-emptying episode, that my husband discovers and overreacts about, we hear "Eeeeew! There's poo-poo on the floor!" to which my husband also overreacts about (he shoulda won an Oscar - really). Turns out that in his attempt to put on some new clothes with an unwiped poopie bum, he left a pretty good skidmark on the area rug in his room. Instead of yet again being able to explain it to him as to how he should have called for backup in wiping, he can't hear me as those eyes are watching my near-hysterical husband ranting and raving like a lunatic....."I can't do it Chris. I just cannot clean up any more poop. You're gonna have to do this!" (We've both been driven to the brink by our dog's bodily fluids from either end, but that story another time. We're wondering if she isn't the next Marley).

The other day, as I'm working on the couch with my laptop, he comes around the corner and announces "Don't see me mom and cover your ears." (This is how he announces that he is about to do something he knows he doesn't want us to see.) So I oblige him, purely for the memory of it. He walks away out of sight but pops his head back into the room and asks, "Can you hear me?" I don't answer him and keep looking at the computer with my ears covered. Next I hear a sliding chair across the tile floor and a loud noise with it. He comes running back around the corner and asks again if I can hear him, to which I again do not respond. He does this yet once more. Finally, I don't hear anything, so I stand up and walk into the kitchen to find him standing on the very heavy dining room chair that is now at the other end of the kitchen reaching into the cookie jar for a granola bar. "Wouldn't it have been easier to ask for one?" I asked him. He answered he wanted to do it by himself.

Being a work-at-home mother means that work tasks you are trying to accomplish with a toddler nearby take quadruple the time it should!

My parenting tips within - find a decorative container/vase in which to keep your sharp knives atop the fridge out of reach of toddlers. Tying a rope around your kitchen table chairs works well for preventing toddlers from climbing but does absolutely nothing when that toddler learns how to untie that rope. I'll never figure out why the phrase terrible two's was ever coined, as the age of 2 never posed any problems for us. It was the age of 3 that kept us on our toes that requires constant reinforcement and lessons to be taught.

So It Isn't Melamine or Shrapnel, but......?

What I found this time gearing up to eat a meal was disturbing - what is it exactly? So, it's round and shaped like the rest of the meatballs.....but.....black? Is it a burnt meatball? It doesn't smell burnt? It doesn't really look burnt, other than it being black......Had this rolled into the pan anywhere near the day I already cooked up and eaten a batch of turkey meatballs for my family, I would have been really close to "tossing my meatballs" so to speak. The sinking feeling I developed in the pit of my stomach when it did so a week later was enough as it is.



Yes, I plan on making a telephone call today about it. I can tell you, however, based on past experiences......finding a piece of metal in my child's pudding cup, emptying out a can of green beans to witness a blackened corncob chunk fall amongst the beans, feeding pickles to my toddler (who would eat absolutely anything) only to discover somewhere in the middle of the jar it tasted as if they were packaged using a liquid chemical of some sort, finding the dead-dressing-drenched ladybug in my prebagged salad mix "that are used in the pest control process," which I chased around my bowl thinking it was a scrumptious bacon bit, capturing it, and only noticing the curled up legs and orange color as I brought it to my mouth.....I can say the numerous coupons about to be sent my way in apology will NOT be enough to encourage me to give it another shot.

So I cut it in half - texture of a crouton - probably burnt, although I have yet to see any meat this burnt look this way.


Sure, the metal-inexcusable; the corn cob-just another vegetable, right?; the chemical pickles - don't know-what do you do?-hire a testing company?; and this black little ball of a thing, probably just a burnt meatball?

Well, the metal, ladybug, and the corn cob only serve to make one wonder "what else" could possibly be going "wrong" in the manufacturing process. The chemical taste in my pickles only cause pause in wondering just how much better we are than China.

The apology coupons in an effort to keep me coming back, rather than being an apology with a request to send it back in for testing at their expense with a personalized followup answer, is disturbing as well.

Is it just me encountering these issues time and time again? I would think it happens to the majority of folks once, but over and over?