Going to the Theater

In July, a community theater was performing Beauty and the Beast. This is one of Kevin's top five favorite movies and I was really excited to take him to see it. We had taken him to his first theater performance last spring and it had been a successful outing. For Beauty and the Beast, we knew a couple girls from church performing in the show as Spoons during the big song "Be Our Guest" - one of Kevin's favorites. My sister and her kids came up for a visit to go see it with us. I wasn't anticipating any problems. I didn't even think to bring the good noise canceling headphones because this was just after VBS when he tolerated a lot of noise and stimulation. Luckily I keep a backup pair of headphones in my bag because we needed them. It was too much for him. It was a bigger production than we had been to in the spring and so at first I thought it was the bigger sound system and the larger audience clapping. But he was still overstimulated after I got him to the back of the theater. I didn't want to miss seeing the "Be Our Guest" performance and luckily Kevin did perk up a little during it. But I think what was bothering him was the live performance of some of the scenes when characters are acting angry, sad, or scared - that was making Kevin upset and we were sitting really close to the stage so it must have made it more real for him. I guess it's actually good that he is having those emotions when watching something like that because he didn't used to (he used to laugh when someone was sad) but now we just need to give him more experiences to see live performances. We did end up seeing the entire performance but scooted out immediately afterwards. I was glad my sister was there to help and they even sat in the back with us for the second act - which her kids said they preferred not being so close to the stage too.

So that was the negative experience of going to the theater. But we made up for it by finding out that Kevin now likes to go to the movie theater. Before this summer Kevin had been to the movie theater a total of 3 times in his almost 12 years of life. I probably should be embarrassed to say this...during the months of August and September Kevin saw 7 movies! We saw the much anticipated Finding Dory with Grandma on her birthday along with Aunt Sarah and Cousin Ethan. We also went to see the new Pete's Dragon the next month with Grandma. I also found out that less than 30 minutes from us, there is a movie theater that shows old Disney movies for $5. We went to see Mulan (Kevin's 2nd favorite movie) and took one of his helpers with us. We watched Cars with his Aunt Sarah and Cousin Ethan. We finally found some time to bring Dad along with us and saw Aristocats (this movie includes the actor voice of Phil Harris who also does the voice of Baloo in the 1967 Jungle Book). And because I thought these old Disney movies were just a summer a thing - I took Kevin to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the last week of summer. But then a couple weeks later, Jon and I were going to go on a date to see a movie and I discovered that the movie theater was showing Kevin's number one favorite movie of all time - The Jungle Book (the animated 1967) version. So we canceled the sitter and turned our date into a trio. It's so great to have this new fun thing to do with Kevin. So if you ever want to see one of your old favorite Disney movies, we would love to go together.