Daily Archives: March 10, 2009

Mama loves when they “get it.”

I love to watch my kids learn, but even more I love to witness the “getting it” of spiritual truths. This goes one step beyond understanding to accepting as truth. It’s the most amazing thing! Then there are times they get it more than I do. They pinpoint connections I’ve missed and amplify for me the very truths I’ve ignored. Draw all these moments together and I am absolutely thrilled. I’m overwhelmed. My skin tingles, my heart flutters, my every breath and very existence praises God!

We don’t watch many movies around here, a side effect of parenthood. When we do see movies (that are less than five years old) it’s on a date (all three Bourne movies and … huh. The last movie we saw in the theatre before that was Finding Nemo.) or we rent a kids’ movie. Believe it or not, I actually paid to see Space Buddies recently. Space Buddies! What happened to me? A movie with talking dogs going to the moon?! Yup. Kids change everything.

I digress.

We also rented the new Horton Hears a Who featuring the voices of Jim Carrey, Steve Carell and Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett! I love that woman. I wanted to be her, complete with ear-tug. It’s really a great movie. With a few caveats, which I’ll detail in a minute, I can’t recommend it highly enough! I loved it and had to buy the DVD the same week. (By the way, the best price I found for the DVD was on Amazon. They even beat Target with a coupon.)

A couple days after watching, Ellie made an announcement on our way to school. “Mom, we’re the speck and Jesus takes good care of us – right?”

She gets it! The movie never mentions God or Jesus or anything religious, but she made the connection without me ever explaining it to her. Of course, I already saw the many spiritual connections in the plot — the faithfulness, devotion, high value of life upheld, forgiveness, someone greater caring for the lesser, faith in the unseen — but I didn’t think my kids, ages 3 and 5, would parallel this fun Dr. Seuss story with God’s truth. But they did. And I love it.

Your turn! What thrilled you this week? What little miracles did you witness?

Click over to this post to read more about Mama Loves, my weekly exercise in Philippians 4:8-9.

Now for the caveats about the movie. My standards for movies change as my kids grow, not only because they can handle more, but because they repeat more. With that in mind, here are my warnings about this fabulous movie:

1. It employs a few select words that I don’t want my kids to repeat: boob, idiot, and “shut up.” These are all used innocently enough, but I still don’t like my kids refering to foolishness as “boobery”, a term also used in the movie. Some parents might also like to know: one character claims her imaginary world is filled with ponies who “poop butterflies.” I thought that was funny, but some might find it offensive.
2. Two characters are definitely scary for younger children: the kangaroo, “self-proclaimed head of the Jungle of Nool,” and the vulture, Vlad, a rather scary guy who chases Horton and regurgitates bones in a very spooky cave. Even at 5, Ellie won’t watch the sceens with Vlad unless I’m in the room.
3. Finally, and I don’t think the kids get this, but maybe they do: in one sceen the chairman berates the mayor in a sound-proof dome. Through the glass we see him pointing to the mayor and then to a picture of a horse’s behind. Kids are smart. It won’t take long for them to connect the dots and start calling each other butthead or something worse.

These things are SO SMALL, but I insist on being well-informed when it comes to my kids and feel an obligation to offer the same courtesy when recommending anything to other parents for their kids.

One last warning: your kids might get stuck on the big musical number at the end. Ellie especially loves belting out “I can’t fight this feeling anymore!” with Horton and the Whos. She and Zach have the choreography down pat and, after repeating that one sceen fifty times a day, I wake each morning with that lovely tune firmly planted in my brain. Oh, mama loves her kids.

Heather also did a review on this movie. Check out her thoughts here.

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, I do not recommend Space Buddies. It was like a mental labotomy, no offense to the creative people who will undoubtedly make a lot of money from it.