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Mom and Dad Go to the Movies

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Mom and Dad Go to the Movies

Before we had our children, Joe and I spent most Saturday evenings at the movies. After our kids were born, our movie dates got fewer and farther between.

Today we can always count on a movie on cable or DVR to entertain us and take us out of our parenting roles, if only for a moment. Whether it be a drama, comedy, action flick, current picture, or classic, movies have always provided us with something to talk about in our 21 years of marriage, 15 of them as parents.

Recently some of our friends and family have joined the parenting ranks and have welcomed their first babies into the world. This has opened up a floodgate of memories for Joe and me. We soon found ourselves laughing as we came up with movie titles that recall those early years of parenting.

The Longest Day best describes the 23 hours of labor I endured waiting for our first child, Tom, to make his way into the world

Three hours into it, all I wanted to do was cocoon at home with my husband, count my contractions and think about the baby that was only hours away..

Nine hours of hard labor later had me telling Joe just what I thought he could do with the tennis balls that we bought at the suggestion of our labor coach.

After I had been in labor for 20 hours, I finally decided I had enough of this nonsense and told Joe we should just forget about it for today and go home. At that point I was so crazy with pain and fatigue that going home really seemed like a plausible idea.

Then they handed us a gorgeous bundle and expected us to leave the hospital with him a few days later.

High Anxiety, sums up our first year as parents dealing with breast feeding, sleepless nights, teething and two trips to the emergency room before Tom turned one.

It also perfectly describes one beautiful July day when Tom was about six months old.

Joe decided to play, fly-the-baby-to-mommy game. To this day I can still remember the sound of my precious son’s head hitting the ceiling fan that before that fateful day, seemed like such a good idea to have in his nursery.

“Kathy look at the baby’s head.”

I screamed, “Joe I’m not looking if he has no head left.”

Yes. High Anxiety nails that whole year. Heck, I will even include his first three years since we had two other ER visits and the discovery that he had a serious allergy to peanuts. A month after Tom turned three, we welcomed our daughter, Lizzy, into our family.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This title encompasses not only the first few diapers we ever changed, but it best describes the diaper I changed a few hours after I gave 18-month old Tom, Blues Clues applesauce.

There should be a warning about what blue food coloring will do to a baby’s digestion. I honestly would have been less scared if aliens had landed in my backyard.

The Year of Living Dangerously:  Two words, Potty Training.

Mission Impossible: Getting a curious, excited toddler to go to bed once they have graduated from the crib to a “big boy bed.”

Mission Impossible 2:  Waking up that same child once he becomes a teenager.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Considering that our youngest child is only nine we are far from the end of Joe and Kathy’s Excellent Adventure. We are somewhere between, The Land of the Lost , of the baby years and The End. Though we are hoping that the teen years don’t have us flying over the cuckoo’s nest.

 

 

Comments

    • Kathy Radigan says

      I love that movie! There is a scene where Steve Martin has two dreams for his son, one where he is success and gives the credit to his dad and one where he goes crazy and blames it all on his dad. I have the same dream/nightmare all the time!! Lol!
      Kathy Radigan recently posted…Mom and Dad Go to the MoviesMy Profile

  7. The Dose of Reality says

    Bwahahahahaha. Oh, SO TRUE!! (I especially love the ending with “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”…SO funny!!) Robert and I were always movie goers before kids. It was our “thing”. The Close Encounters experience made me chuckle. It never happened to me as a parent, but when my little brother was about 5 he ate hundreds of blue gumballs he got for Christmas one year. He was pooping blue for a week. It was SO DISGUSTING!! Bwahahahahaha. –Lisa
    The Dose of Reality recently posted…Would You Rather: Give Up TV Or Books?My Profile

    • Kathy Radigan says

      Thanks Lisa! You know it wasn’t just that it was gross, I was terrified at what he could have eaten that caused such a reaction. Then I remembered the blue applesauce!! Lol! xo

  8. Kathy says

    LOL this too funny! I agree with the comment about the first year being the Night of the Living Dead I’m in that time frame now. Also Cinderella, since my family needs me to do everything for them.

    • Kathy Radigan says

      Kathy, Life of the Living Dead is great, and I swear, 15 years later I could still use that title!! Lol! Cinderella is another one I could relate to! Lol! Thanks for coming by today! 🙂

    • Kathy Radigan says

      Oh Stacey, I have never seen that movie all the way through, but from what I have seen that can’t be good at all! Lol! Thanks so much for coming by! 🙂

    • Kathy Radigan says

      It is funny now, but I still remember the panic and from the sound of it I really thought his head was gone! The funniest thing about it is when we called the pediatrician she said she knew it was a dad from the message, Baby hit head on ceiling fan! xo

Much thanks to Joseph Radigan, who besides being a great husband and father, also uses his talents to gently and ever so tactfully edit my blog. Joe is a business editor at Thomson Reuters in NY.
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