So everyone is going to yell at me for letting Kai watch the movie Gremlins (1 & 2), but let me preface it with the fact that his all time favorite movie scene that he makes me let him watch over and over again is the dragon scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so with that as a baseline for his fear factor, I personally thought that he'd find the Gremlins movies funny as hell. I mean it is his sort of wacky stupid humor. Well, he did. He thought they were funny as hell any time he peeked out from under my arm. For the first time in his 3 short years I saw my fearless son bury his face in my body, and with a horrified fascination, insist that I NOT turn the movie off. He instead wanted me to narrate what was going on during the scary scenes while he listened, but under NO CIRCUMSTANCE was I allowed to turn the movie off. After 1 he insisted on watching 2.
I know! I know! Beat me over the head! This is not age appropriate for a 3 year old, but he's not really a 3 year old in so many ways, and he watches some really intricate sci-fi already. His favorite TV cartoon is Avatar for goodness sake and he's followed the plot through 2 seasons. He loves Dragonheart and Aragon, he's watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy 3 times already (favorite characters are the Ent's of course and now he's quite obsessed with spotting "walking trees" in our neighborhood. He looks at Oak trees mostly to find their faces in the trunks), is half way through reading the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with me (I read), so basically, he's already way past the age appropriate limit. As far as he's concerned (until now that is), it all is exactly what it is, sci-fi and make believe. He's never had any issue separating it from reality,,,until tonight it would seem. I'm not quite sure why the gremlins freaked him out. I mean, they LOOK like Muppets. The orcs in LOTR are scary as hell but all they did to him was prompt him to want an orc and ogre army, build a volcano, and blow them all to kingdom come with it. These gremlins though, in particular the suspense of it all when they hatched from their cocoons, scared him. (OK, not terrified scared, but more of a fascinated but still hiding his face in my arm scared. He was having a hell of a lot of fun being frightened to be honest, then spent the rest of the day trying hard as hell to scare me...but still)
Anyway, tonight he went to the Nth degree in gremlin-proofing. It seems that his monster now eats cauliflower and raw eggs. I don't know why, and am not going to question it at the moment because his strategy was to feed his monster and leave a note in the monster's food box asking him to put any gremlins he found in to the lights. He actually dictated the letter to me to write, then signed it, "Love Kai". He then turned on every night light in his room, including his battery powered camping light that hangs over his pillow (for midnight emergencies). He had me leave the night light on in the bathroom, and then did a perimeter check of the living room, but shrugged his shoulders and said that the monster would get them out of there if they got in to the living room. Either that or it would seem that our cat, Monster, would scratch them.
I swear. He was absolutely methodical about how he was tactically protecting the house from gremlins, then once he was satisfied, sat down in his rocking chair and waited patiently for me to come read him his books. I kept looking at him and asking him if he was going to be ok, and by that time he looked at me like I was over dramatizing the situation that he now had under control and gave me that exasperated, "YEEESSSS MOOOMMM! Can we read books now?"
Well ok then. I'm waiting for 2:00 a.m.
I know! I know! Beat me over the head! This is not age appropriate for a 3 year old, but he's not really a 3 year old in so many ways, and he watches some really intricate sci-fi already. His favorite TV cartoon is Avatar for goodness sake and he's followed the plot through 2 seasons. He loves Dragonheart and Aragon, he's watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy 3 times already (favorite characters are the Ent's of course and now he's quite obsessed with spotting "walking trees" in our neighborhood. He looks at Oak trees mostly to find their faces in the trunks), is half way through reading the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with me (I read), so basically, he's already way past the age appropriate limit. As far as he's concerned (until now that is), it all is exactly what it is, sci-fi and make believe. He's never had any issue separating it from reality,,,until tonight it would seem. I'm not quite sure why the gremlins freaked him out. I mean, they LOOK like Muppets. The orcs in LOTR are scary as hell but all they did to him was prompt him to want an orc and ogre army, build a volcano, and blow them all to kingdom come with it. These gremlins though, in particular the suspense of it all when they hatched from their cocoons, scared him. (OK, not terrified scared, but more of a fascinated but still hiding his face in my arm scared. He was having a hell of a lot of fun being frightened to be honest, then spent the rest of the day trying hard as hell to scare me...but still)
Anyway, tonight he went to the Nth degree in gremlin-proofing. It seems that his monster now eats cauliflower and raw eggs. I don't know why, and am not going to question it at the moment because his strategy was to feed his monster and leave a note in the monster's food box asking him to put any gremlins he found in to the lights. He actually dictated the letter to me to write, then signed it, "Love Kai". He then turned on every night light in his room, including his battery powered camping light that hangs over his pillow (for midnight emergencies). He had me leave the night light on in the bathroom, and then did a perimeter check of the living room, but shrugged his shoulders and said that the monster would get them out of there if they got in to the living room. Either that or it would seem that our cat, Monster, would scratch them.
I swear. He was absolutely methodical about how he was tactically protecting the house from gremlins, then once he was satisfied, sat down in his rocking chair and waited patiently for me to come read him his books. I kept looking at him and asking him if he was going to be ok, and by that time he looked at me like I was over dramatizing the situation that he now had under control and gave me that exasperated, "YEEESSSS MOOOMMM! Can we read books now?"
Well ok then. I'm waiting for 2:00 a.m.
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