How to get Anja to sit still for 2 consecutive hours
Sit her in a seat with some popcorn and watch a movie about chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.
Anyone who knows Anja is familiar with her boundless energy and incessant chitter-chatter. It only gets worse when the weather is bad, since she spends hours every day playing outside. It has rained the last three days in a row (IN THE NORTHWEST? NO ONE TOLD ME IT RAINS IN THE NORTHWEST.) That means our little Princess has not been able to play outside, which means she has had no outlet for her endless energy for THREE DAYS IN A ROW.
We needed to get out of the house.
So we went to McDonald’s where an unsupervised little boy decided to walk up to our table and put his drink with our stuff and refuse to leave us alone. We’re usually pretty laid back about little kids, especially since if we can deal with ours, we can deal with any, but unsupervised kids who interrupt someone else’s meal is really irritating to both of us. We followed our meal with a trip to Best Buy hoping to purchase a replacement monitor for our living room, but we didn’t have too much luck. This was followed by a brief but productive quick trip to Famous Footwear where I got a nice, new pair of running shoes and painfully tore myself away from all the other really really cute shoes that I really really wanted but really really couldn’t afford right now. (Mom? Dad? You reading this? Think: zappos.com gift certificate…it doesn’t take up any room in our luggage and they ship for free!)
On our way home, we decided on a whim to stop and see what movies were playing. It turned out that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was starting in less than 1/2 hour - perfect! Isak had already seen it with a friend but wanted to see it again, so we decided to go.
As soon as the movie got to the part where they were in the factory, Anja went from her usual wiggle-worm self to being perfectly still, captivated by the concept of a completely edible factory. And she stayed that way until the very end. I was so impressed! It made for a very enjoyable theater experience, one we might actually do again someday.
On our way home, Anja asked if we could please go to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Sorry, sweetie, I already ate it.
Baldur
A rope might do?