movie night

Elias and I just watched our first full movie together.  His aunt & uncle got him The Polar Express book & DVD for Christmas.  We've been enjoying the book.  His favorite part is when the kids are served "hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate" and we've had a few cups in reinactment Monday night was set aside for the movie.  We cleaned up after dinner, got a blanket, turned out the lights, and snuggled up on the couch.  Elias was pretty excited, and was not disappointed.  He stayed fully engaged the entire movie, surpassing previous  movie attempts by about 110 minutes.  He cuddled into the crook of my arm next to me the whole time, often tearing his eyes from the screen to look up thankfully at me with a big smile on his face.  It was all pretty wonderful.  After it finished and we were walking off to bed, Elias proclaimed in his final judgement voice "That was a good train movie."  I'm glad it was all about the train and the snuggling for him, not Santa.

The next morning he sprang out of bed and rushed out of the room.  "Great" I thought, "he's going to the bathroom without my telling him."  But alas, no:  he ran into the living room, still 1/2 asleep, to retrieve the DVD and start begging to watch "the train movie, just one [more] time."

Tonight we had another movie night to revisit this.  He still loved it, but this time spent most the time dancing around in front of the TV rather than snuggling.  I'm taking the opportunity to blog about it.  He is crazy about the dancing hot chocolate scene, and anytime the train goes really fast (which is a good hunk of the movie).  I also found him quoting the book along with the movie, enthusiastically supplying a lot of narration, and acting out scenes, like trying to grab the wind-blown ticket.