Movie review: Hook

I have been wading through the animated sludge that is the state of kids movies these days (Gnomeo and Juliet, Alpha and Omega), biding my time until Lena can finally appreciate the finer cinematic feats, (Gilmore Girls, All Movies With Ryan Gosling) and we have finally arrived.

This afternoon Lena and I watched Hook.

Ru-fi-OHHHHH

Bangarang! Bangarang Rufio!

Ok so that's like the summation of all memories I have of this film. Lena and I have been reading Peter Pan at night, some Disney-to-book version, and it. sucks. I remember Peter Pan as a kid, and being enthralled by the lost boys, and the concept of not having to grow up. It's only after College Enlightenment (tm) and reading more and more kids books and young adult fiction, that I started to realize that in literature boys have all the fun. And the thing about that is that girls read these books and identify with the boys. But boys don't have  to do this. Because they're given enough of their own sex role models to identify with. Gosh what was I saying? Oh yeah, Peter Pan sucks because the boys have all the fun, and all the women are perpetually jealous of each other. Tinkerbell hates Wendy because she gets Peter's attention. Then the mermaids are jealous of Wendy, then Wendy is jealous of Tiger Lily when Peter starts paying attention and then Wendy is all like "I am your mother!". So in the entirety of Peter Pan (the Disney version) All the women are jealous of other women, and then motherhood. This is not the message I want my daughter to hear when she is growing up. "I will be jealous of other women and then become a mother." WORST IDEA EVER. 

Although like I said before, I grew up watching Peter Pan, and this wasn't ever an issue because I just identified with the Lost Boys. Problem solved. 

Back to Hook. Still the boys get all the fun, but I forgot how many messages were in this movie. I was seriously crying from the part where they all start throwing food at each other until the end. The themes! Imagination! Believing in yourself! And then Robin Williams' transformation--when he says to his son, "You're my happy thought" I just completely lost it. Clearly I over-identified with this movie today. Oh and then Rufio goes to fight Captain Hook and then I was like, "Shit. Rufio totally dies in this." Waterworks!

Ok I'm overly emotional, and this was in no way a movie review. Hook was way deeper than I remembered. Lena spent the entire time waiting for the Indians to come. (I may or may not have falsely advertised the movie.) And then I spent all this time being like, "Imagination!" "Identity!" "Growing up!" 

Imagination. Identity. Growing up.

Worst parenting moment ever.

I tend to overuse hyperbole. Favorite phrases of mine are, "This is the best ___ ever." "I'm having the worst ____ ever." "You never do _____."  So implications in relationships aside, I'm working on it. I'm now allowing myself one hyperbole a day. For instance, if you follow me on twitter, I was putting on skinny jeans right after I lotioned my legs. And that was the worse thing ever.

Exaggerations aside, I just had the biggest "Oh shit!" moment of my entire parenting career. And I thought about keeping it to myself because it is incredibly embarrassing and horrible, but then I thought, you know what, for the greater good, I will share my misfortune with the world. My only hope is that you, dear reader, never make the same mistake.

So Lena and I have been having bedtime issues. I say both of us, because she's the one that has trouble going to sleep, but then I'm the one that is struggling to stay awake as she's struggling to fall asleep. Not a good combination. We sort of figured out that it was somewhat related to nap time, she doesn't nap on the weekends anymore, and tends to get worn out and go to bed earlier on the weekends, and then during weekdays when she naps at school she goes to bed later. I had sort of resigned myself to deal with this until elementary school when they don't nap.

Then, two things happened. About two weeks ago, Lena had an awesome Saturday. We went to the park and the museum and we ran around like maniacs for about 8 hours. And then we had people over for dinner. And I gave her a few cookies for dessert, and she was wired, and didn't go to bed until 11. And I was like, damn, I guess she was over excited by having dinner guests. Then the Monday after that, we had an awesome dinner, and she forgot about dessert because we were playing with something or whatever, and by the time she remembered she hadn't had dessert she was already in the bath, and I was just like, "It's too late, we'll have dessert tomorrow." And that night Lena was asleep by 8:30.

At this point, I use my now-questionable-though-I-previously-thought-were-fine powers of deduction and say to myself, "Why on Saturday after a long day she went to bed at 11, and on a Monday when she napped at school did she go to bed at 8:30?"

And I thought and I thought. And then this light slowly turns on in my head. She didn't have dessert on Monday. And you know what we usually have for dessert? Chocolate. A small piece of chocolate. Or chocolate covered raisins. Or a cookie with some sort of chocolate in it. Do you see where this is going?

I'd like to add, I was out the other night telling this story to a friend of mine, and I literally had said one sentence, "So I've been giving Lena chocolate for dessert--" and he interjected with, "But what about the caffeine?" I mean some people are naturally smart I guess.

APPARENTLY THERE IS CAFFEINE IN CHOCOLATE.

Especially in dark chocolate. I mean it's in the cocoa part, so white chocolate has no caffeine, and dark chocolate has the most. Which is not enough to affect anyone who probably weighs over 100 pounds, but holy shit. To a 34 pound bean, a piece of dark chocolate is like 10 cups of coffee. (Exaggeration. I did not do any sort of calculation to come up with that number.) I have been caffeinating my daughter. And she is having trouble sleeping after that. BEST MOTHER EVER. RIGHT HERE.

Gosh, so I figured this out, and we don't have chocolate for dessert anymore, and Lena is asleep every night by 9:30 at the latest, usually earlier, and she almost always falls asleep while I am reading to her. No more up and down and in and out of bed, and me threatening her to stay in her room and her just saying she can't sleep. Because of course she can sleep. If no one gives her caffeine.

Needless to say, I feel just a little bit silly.

But Lena sleeps great now! And so do I. I think in parenting more than anything the phrase "All's well that ends well" is extremely applicable.

I am such an idiot.

Lena, you'll be pleased to know, is no worse for the wear.

Tidbits.

1) Valentine's day. I disprove of Lena's daycare perpetuating the farce that is Valentine's day. They are training her to be crushed in high school when her crush doesn't show up on Feb 14 because he is out having sex with his senior girlfriend in a car somewhere, and then again sometime between 20 and 25 waiting for a call or flowers or chocolate from some romanticized version of whatever sex she happens to be attracted to.
Not to mention that giving out Valentines at 4 is really just about impressing other parents. Do Lena and I spend an afternoon "crafting" together to make personalized valentines? Answer: No. I go to Target and pick out the least obnoxious least commercialized valentine's I could find. (Twilight or Glee?)

2) Pops told me today that Lena is 4 which means that it's basically a third of the way until she is a teenager. I think this was meant to be comforting, but it's really just scary.

3) The past few days have been gorgeous, and this has got to be the most mild winter we've had in a long time, but today is cold and rainy, and there are so many birds in the yard and it makes me remember a short story I was working on, and that I could get behind bird watching.

Finally,

4) It's hard to disentangle yourself from something that's been an almost constant presence for almost three years. It's petrifying and exciting. Some days it's like waking up from a nightmare with too many blankets on top of you, and it's a struggle to get free even when you know there's nothing scary anymore. Other times it's like coming up for air after a long time underwater. Anyway, it's all hard and complicated, but also the right thing to do. It's hard to wake up from a nightmare, but it's better in the end. Even if it was a nightmare disguised as a dream, and even if it was a dream that we called love.

If only

Four years old

If only we were so forgiving
If only we didn't know any better.

Watching Television

Watching Television
by Marie Howe

I didn't want to look at the huge white egg the mother spider dragged
along behind her, attached to her abdomen, held off the ground,

bigger than her own head-
and inside it: hundreds of baby spiders feeding off the nest,

and in what seemed like the next minute,
spinning their own webs quickly and crazily,

bumping into each other's and breaking them, then mending
and moving over, and soon they got it right:

each in his or her own circle and running around it.
And then they slept,

each in the center of a glistening thing: a red dot in ether.

Last night the moon was as big as a house at the end of the street,
a white frame house, and rising,

and I thought of a room it was shining in, right then,
a room I might live in and can't imagine yet.

And this morning, I thought of a place on the ocean where no one is,
no boat, no fish jumping,

just sunlight gleaming on the water, humps of water that hardly break.

I have argued bitterly with the man I love, and for two days
we haven't spoken.

We argued about one thing, but it really was another.
I keep finding myself standing by the front windows looking out at the street

and the walk that leads to the front door of this building,
white, unbroken by footprints.

Anything I've ever tried to keep by force I've lost.










From What the Living Do