Move-y time

In a gigantic triumph of optimism over experience, we all went to the movies yesterday. It was our first movie together as a family, and Mabel's first ever trip to the cinema, not to mention Dash's first since last Thanksgiving's disastrous half-viewing of Tangled, and it went admirably.

On Saturday, were were supposed to have a date night, but our babysitter forgot us. I gave her an Irish half-hour leeway, and by the time I realised she'd crossed the line from a little late to probably not coming, our delicately timed window of opportunity was closing and there was no point trying to get her. Also, it turned out I didn't have her mum's phone number.

(As she's only 13, her mum looks after all her scheduling. Which is a less-than-ideal situation, really, because her mother is a busy, working mother-of-two who has other things on her mind, and the babysitter is a 13-year-old girl whose first priority probably is not her babysitting job. Basically, I blame myself for not sending a confirmation e-mail on Saturday morning. And she was very apologetic, said they'd had the day from hell and all forgot, asked can we reschedule... I'm not sure whether to give her another chance or find an older babysitter we should have probably got in the first place. Probably both.)

So I was hungry and cold and grumpy and then Mabel refused to go to sleep. She had been going to stay up with the babysitter and fall asleep, um, organically, let's say - that is, if I put her to bed before we left (a) she'd never go to sleep that early and (b) when - not if - she woke up, she'd be unhappy* to find not-me there. And she won't go to bed for anyone else, but if allowed to stay up she'll either happily play the entire time or fall asleep on the sofa while pretending she's not tired. So I was hoping for the latter, but there's only so long you can push that, so if we weren't out the door at 7.30 - not to mention the issue of the place we wanted to go for dinner being popular on a Saturday night - it was too late to go by 8.00.

Finally, having been brought downstairs again while I had some hastily conceived pasta-from-the-freezer to haul me back up the cliff from Evil Mummy to Nice Mummy, she went to sleep at about 9.45. So the next morning we slept in till almost 8am. She's been in a phase of 6am wakings, so this was a departure, and while welcome, I was afraid it had put the kybosh on Sunday's nap.

As predicted, 12.30 came and went and Mabel decided she didn't want a nap after all; what she really wanted was some cinnamon toast. So after lunch, I looked at my precious, overtired daughter and decided that her father and I should indulge ourselves at the expense of our children, and that today was the day to go to The Muppets. "If she's tired," I thought, "she can just snuggle up on my lap."

What sort of self-delusional teabag was I steeping in my mug of piping-hot self-indulgence? This is the sort of denial that you are reduced to after five and a half years of parenthood and about that many trips to the cinema in the whole time. I conveniently chose to forget that when tired, my children turn into Duracell/Energizer bunnies, unable to sit still, and - for Mabel at least - also unable to shut up.

We at least had the sense to miss most of the obscenely loud trailers and ads before going in. We even got Dash to use the bathroom so he wouldn't spend the whole time jigging in his seat. Mabel, in underpants, refused to go. She sat on my knee - because her own seat kept tipping up and swallowing her - and, to her credit, stayed dry the entire time, until we arrived home and she peed all over herself because she just won't go to the toilet for me.

And she sat there and ate popcorn for probably the first half of the film. For most of the second half, she climbed onto my lap, from there to the empty seat beside me, back down off it, and up on to my lap again. About one gazillion times. Stopping (or not) only to ask in piercing tones why they were doing that, whether that was the baddie, why he was the baddie, why he wanted to knock down the theatre, and a host of other pertinent questions. Or to declaim random non-sequiturs such as, "I like my friends, Mommy**." Which was fine most of the time except when it coincided with a brief quieter interlude in the film.

Eventually the climbing was too much, and, with what I estimated to be five minutes to go judging by the advancement of the plot, I took her out of her seat and brought her down to the passage to the door, put her down and said "Run up and down there." Just like the bunny, she took off as soon as her toes touched the ground, and happily ran a few laps. Then she found a handrail to climb, so I brought her down to the very front seating area, where we were out of sight of most of the audience, and let her clamber around for a while, shushing her regularly. At this point I noticed that she'd taken off not just her shoes - politely handed to me much earlier - but also her socks. The floor of a cinema is just where you want to romp barefoot, isn't it? (Ugh. Now I'm having flashbacks to the sticky carpet of the big screen at the Savoy in Dublin, never seen but always felt, slightly spongy and holding onto your shoes just a moment too long at every step. This floor wasn't that bad. At least, it wasn't carpet.)

And then it was the credits and we could gather our belongings, locate the socks, and take her and her brother - who sat still and enjoyed the film like a pro - home for pizza, a bath, and an early bedtime. The weekend was pretty decently salvaged after all.


*screaming blue bloody murder, that's what.

** It pains me to admit it, but what she calls me sounds more like "Mommy" than her brother's "Mummy".  Except when she's saying Mom, or Mama, or Mummy Jaguar, or whatever my moniker of the day happens to be.