Toy Story 3

Saw Toy Story 3 Saturday. So great. I'm not sure what it is in the water that they drink at Pixar that makes all of their films so fantastic, but I surely hope they keep drinking it and would love to have some myself. They make such wonderful movies. Pretty sure my favorite Pixar movie is still (not surprisingly) "The Incredibles", but "Wall-E" is up there as well, as is the original "Toy Story". This one was terrific as well. I still haven't seen "Up" but understand that is great as well. Oh, right, I know what it is - actual storytelling. Right. When the people responsible for writing a story actually, you know, write a story, as opposed to layering one pop-cultural reference on top of another. Don't get me wrong, I love pop-cultural references as much as anyone, it is a currency I trade in heavily, but I believe they must be earned and well timed. Just making references to the Godfather does not make your movie funny. If I want Godfather references I'll just watch the Godfather (which I have done approximately 250 times, give or take a few).

Now you may have also heard that the end of the movie was making some grown men weepy. I wouldn't know anything about that, I just happened to get something in my eye at the end of the movie. Complete coincidence.

Can you have schadenfreude towards your own kids?

Just to go ahead and state the completely obvious, dealing with kids can be challenging. One little interaction - Kid #2 has a habit of throwing/putting food on the floor. It would be one thing if she were 8 months old, but she's almost 2 1/2, and so throwing/dropping of food is not nearly as funny/cute. We had been frustrated recently, but have deleloped a new system for dealing with this. The first time she does it, we pull her away from the table for a minute or so as a warning. The second time she does it, she's done eating that meal and doesn't get anything else. It's a little harsh, but we're trying to get her to understand "consequences".

Anyway, this morning she put some cheerios on the floor so I pulled her away from the table. After a minute I brought her back, and a few minutes after that she proceeded to take her entire cup of water and quite deliberately dump it out on the floor. She seemed quite please with herself, but I was pissed. I took her out of her chair, handed her a towel and told her to clean it up (just a side note, I didn't actually expect her to clean it all up, my point was to teach her that we clean up our own messes). She started to clean it up, and quickly lost interest, and then decided it would be more fun to jump up and down and splash in the puddles on the floor. In the non-suprise of the year, she slipped and fell and landed on her ass.

Now, there is something of a balancing act that you need to do when this sort of things happens, and I'm not totally sure how well I balanced it. I comforted her because she was crying and in pain, but some part of me was thinking that this was an excellent "teachable moment" for her - you pour the water on the floor, you jumped in it instead of cleaning it up, and then you get hurt - all in all, that's a lesson I can live with her learning, particularly where she was not seruiously hurt.

Of course, there was another part of me that wanted to point at her and go "ha ha" like Nelson from the Simpsons, but I kept that to myself.