Date Night

So we had this grand plan about taking Arthur to the movies, to allow Erin and me to have an afternoon out, while not overburdening Nana and Pop Pop at home. However, because Arthur fell asleep at home at an inopportune time (and the girls were being fed), and as the temperature outside was still in the low teens, Nana convinced us to go out on our date alone.

It turns out, though, that this was the right decision, and one that might have saved us from a visit by social services. You see, we had planned on taking Arthur to see Sweeney Todd. As teachers, Erin and I are both familiar with the shock of playing a video in front of the class, and all of a sudden noticing in horror each and every inappropriate scene in the video. For some reason, these scenes didn't seem that bad at home, but become glaringly obvious in the classroom. The same for Sweeney Todd. While we were intimately familiar with the story (we even saw the play in New York City), and have memorized all the lines, we still didn't think it would be wrong to take Arthur. Had we taken him, he probably would be have slept most of the time, and any parts of the movie he saw he wouldn't understand. However, once the first spray of blood arced across the silver screen, we were especially thankful we had left him at home. We'll have to work on utilizing our new parent mindset more often. And now at least we won't have to go with trepidation to the barber's for Arthur's first hair cut.

In other news, we have been working on altering the triplets' bedtime routine, in an effort to avoid the girls' nightly scream fests. Tonight we tried reading a book to the girls, and we gave Betty her first bath in a bathtub. The screaming was eliminated, but it still took hours to put them to sleep.