I took Thomas to his very first movie in a real movie theatre. We hit the 11am screening to make sure our presence impacted as few people as possible. There turned out to be just two other families in the whole theatre and one of the other families had a toddler with them so I relaxed a little.

My first mistake was to arrive too early so we had to sit through previews. Usually I enjoy the previews but this time I was all to aware of the fact that they were sucking up precious time from Thomas’ attention span. A couple of the previews were also a little too old and scary for a toddler.

The seats were too big. I had to help him hold down the front because his feet barely went to the edge of the seat.

The movie itself was a little scary and intense in parts which had me worried from the start. But Thomas seemed to enjoy some of it and he likes robots right now so it made an impression. The message was probably lost on him but I’m not sure he understands all of Toy Story either. And it was missing the same amount of humour that you can find in some of the other pixar movies.

He stayed in the seat for about 10 minutes before asking if he could sit on the floor in the aisle. I figured the floor couldn’t be too putrid during the first sesion of the day so I let him. That bought me another 45 minutes or so but then I started hearing the dreaded words (imagine the whiny voice). “I want to go now. I’m tired. Can we just go now?”

The problem was that I was now involved in the story so I wanted to stay. I managed to keep him in the theatre until the very end (we stood by the door for the last 10 minutes). As soon as we walked out of the theatre Thomas looked at me and said “That was great! I want to see another movie.”

It will be a while before we try it again. I think we’ll just stick to DVDs at home for now.