I took two of the kids off W’s hands today for a trip to the cinema. I had planned to take all three, but following little miss 5’s repeated adventures during the night, we had to choose the nuclear option and take away her visit to the cinema. Her behaviour is always attention seeking, and it always feels like we come down on her harder and more often than her sisters, but she often leaves us with no choice. Leaving her behind today equated to loss of attention - and the loss of a fun day out, so hopefully something sunk in.
I can say without doubt that G-Force is the worst movie I have had to endure so far as a parent. It’s probably on a par with Garfield, only with less humour, less jokes, and less point. Even the mighty Bill Nighy is woefully under-used as the token arch baddy. If you imagine any z-list action movie, and then replace all the cast with Gineau Pigs, you’ve pretty much summed up G-Force.
The highlight of the day was perhaps our trip to Nandos before the cinema - where our youngest and eldest behaved wonderfully and were a joy to take out. They ate like they hadn’t been fed for several days, and drank enough fizzy drink to sink a battleship. I was somewhat surprised when our youngest stalled halfway through her frozen yoghurt, but then remembered a friend’s post about brain freeze. I guess her brain interprets “too cold” with “don’t like” at the moment… only she forgets in time for the next opportunity for a cold pudding. The scales were perhaps tipped in Nandos favour also by their crafty provision of by far the best activity sets I have ever seen for the children - folding colouring activities, board game, and puzzles. Why more restaurants can’t do something similar is a mystery.
Our last stop before returning home was HMV - a huge music and movies store that I used to spend rather a lot of my expendable income in when I was single. Returning now is something of a novelty - usually in search of either Anime, or an album by the likes of Rufus Wainright on the rare occaisions I get to but music from a store rather than online. We left with a couple of kids DVDs, a Lost Boys T-Shirt for Wend, and the “Watchmen” movie for me.
Note from W - Why do they not make all merchandise t-shirts as skinny fit too?
We arrived in the bus station with a couple of minutes to spare, and were home in time for tea and medals. Middle daughter was somewhat quiet, absorbed in a Dora the Explorer activity on the kids laptop. While emptying my bag I was somewhat horrified to discover our youngest’s DVD choice - “Dora Meet Diego” - was missing. W saw my panicked searching and enquired if I was looking for the Diego DVD… apparently a little person had run past excitedly trying to open it a few moments before. I never even saw her - light fingered little bugger!
The rest of the day has been consumed with washing up, more washing up, dinner, and more washing up. It feels like our house is slowly turning back to normal, but still cowers under the shadow of the biggest washing mountain I have ever seen. I fear we will all be killed by a clothes slide.