Well, we did the movie thing

As I have previously discussed, Jack is scared of the movies. More specifically, he is scared of the movie THEATER, because he is more than a little obsessed with the kind of movies that come in "suitcases" (read, DVD cases) and can be watched at home. We have discussed why he is scared of the movie theater with him countless times without getting too far. He says it is (a) too dark (b) too loud and (c) too scary. I am figuring a and b must lead him to c.

This has been going on for quite a while and we finally decided to MAKE him to see a movie even though he didn't want to at all. So, this weekend, Keith, Mimi and I took him to see Wall-E in San Antonio. I had read that it had no dialogue for the first thirty minutes so I thought it would be perfect since he'd have time to ease into the whole "too loud" thing.

Before we even got in the door, he tried to make a run back to the van. Keith ran and caught him, and I carried his 43 lbs in and through the snack line. The snack had been one of our main bribes and was a total bust as he didn't care at all and was too scared at that point and upset to even really choose his own candy.

Keith had brought these HUGE headphones that block out noise that are from when his dad was in the Marine Corps in the late 70s early 80s. I cannot at all explain them and wish I had taken a picture. Trust me they were ENORMOUS and if you had seen Jack you would have thought he was nuts. We also carried in the following things... three beanie babies, one of the grandparents dogs' blankets, and one stuffed duck. If I had a picture of Jack and all of these things in the headphones it would make this post so much better, but it was too stressful to take a picture at that juncture.

So, Jack starts screaming during the snack checkout and I tell Keith we are going into the theater. I attempt to go in and sit down. Jack has his head burrowed into my chest and is carrying all his stuff. Once we get into the dark theather he starts full-fledged crying and talking loud/screaming. "Let's GOOOOOOOOOO" is a common refrain, as well as "NOOOOOOOOO!!", "I don't want it!", "I don't like the movie theater", and my favorite as well as the one that made me feel the most guilty "Let's get out of HERE!!!!" After about three minutes of this that felt like about thirty, I left the theater with him. We sat on a bench for a while outside the theater while I came to the realization that one of the main problems here was that Jack wasn't sucking his thumb. He had both hands over his ears the whole time so he didn't have a free hand to suck. I tried to convince him to put the military headphones on again but no dice.
F I N A L L Y after a lot of work I got him back in there with one hand over his ear myself, one of his hands over the other ear, and his other thumb in his mouth.

For the first fifteen minutes he watched nothing at all and had his eyes closed and ears covered. For the next thirty minutes after that he watched out of the side of his eyes while only partially having his head buried in my shirt. Finally, I turned him around and he watched the rest from Keith or my lap, still having his hands over his ears.

Afterwards, he was back up to his regular Jack persona, saying things like "I love Wall-E!" and "He is my favorite rol-a-bot." We asked him if he wanted to go to another movie sometimes and he said, "Well, no thanks."

This is what success looks like people.