I took the kids to the Planetarium a week or so ago, with not quite disastrous results, but I wasn’t surprised at the turnout of the evening, though I was disappointed. I was alternately fuming and laughing, and then we had made it through the whole show. Amazeballs!
Coincidentally, the boys had recently watched an episode of Bubble Guppies and they had been to their little fishy planetarium,  so the boys had an inkling of what the room would be like. However, that didn’t stop nearly 3yo from screaming out that “I can’t see I CAN’T SEE” when the lights went out. If we weren’t supposed to be awed and hushed I would have laughed out. The big boys kept asking if we were inside an alien ship (no) or if it was a rocket ship (no) and was it going to blast off (no)? They took more convincing than I would have thought necessary, and pointed out that were no seatbelts, and that all rockets have seatbelts. It might have been then that we needed to run out for a toilet break, and run around for a few minutes since the show was starting late, 15 minutes late to be precise. Add that to having driven 3 tired boys in the car for 50 minutes, with nothing to do but eat snacks, read books and look out the window – because you know that someone had fed pennies into the dvd player on multiple occasions and now it’s fuckdeedoo – when they normally would have been eating dinner and winding down towards bed time, shenanigans were bound to follow.
To be fair, there weren’t too many of them, and the people in front were more enamored with nearly 3yo rather than annoyed by him, but still, it turns out I’m sort of a stickler for being mostly quiet when in a room that bounces sound right back at you and 149 of your closest neighbours.
There was a bit of seat flipping, which really pissed me off, but frankly, what was worse was the ongoing high level scientific monologue, the whole time, with just one more interesting fact just 19 more times. It was too much information for me, let alone for the boys. We could have done with a few more minutes of quiet awe, because tben maybe 5yo wouldn’t have decided to sit way down yonder (just to piss me off?) and then encourage nearly 3yo to do the same and sit and chatter loudly together, prompting me to quietly go and have a discussion about being quiet, which actually resulted in me slipping and slamming my head into 6.5yo’s head and bruising my arm pretty badly on the arm rest as well. I’m pretty sure I was not quiet. I was sure at the time that 6.5yo would start bawling – and rightfully so – because it was a considerable noggin floggin’.
Eventually we made it through the show and I was ready to dash out to the carpark, but Q & As would delay us. And actually, 6.5yo volunteered info about Jupiter to all and sundry. Proud parenting moment!
It was a tiresome evening, but after a glass or (insert digit of your choice) of wine, I can say that it was worth it all (because of Jupiter and also) to see the look on nearly 3yo’s face when he was on the can and the auto flush kicked on (biggest, most perfectly round eyes ever) because his widdle bottom has almost no presence to detect. Totes adorbs!