Natalia's 1st official Daddy Daughter Date

Natalia is a big movie nut.  She loves animated movies.  I'm not sure if this is true for all kids (Lydia isn't overly interested), but she consumes movies at an incredible rate.  She watches anything she can and when she finds a movie she likes she will watch it over and over.  She probably gets that from me, her dad. I'm a big dork too and love a good movie.  My opinion of  a good movie often varies greatly from Natalia's, but we both agree that How to Train Your Dragon is worth repeated viewing.  So I was pretty excited when I heard about the sequel and Natalia was also excited when I showed her the preview.  

The problem was that with two adults and three kids of very young age it is hard to get out and see movies in the theater.  Selena also liked How to Train Your Dragon (HTTYD), but she doesn't love it like Natalia and I.  She was interested in the seeing the movie, but making it work with the three young ones would require finding babysitting, which generally means waiting until Selena's mom is in town to take on the always challenging task of the Hodges kids.  My solution to this was to propose that Natalia and I go to the movie together while my sweet wife misses out on the fun to watch Lydia and Quinton.  Selena was not too excited for this arrangement, that is until I ran the phrase "Daddy-Daughter date" by her.  After Selena heard that she immediately agreed that one-on-one time with each kid/parent was a good idea and something we should be doing on a regular basis.  Seeing this movie would be our first official Daddy-Daughter date, with more to come with Lydia.  Plus Daddy-Son dates extreme awesome adventure time for Quinton when he gets old enough to do more than drool and poop on himself.  There will be Mommy-Daughter/Son dates too, but those are yet to be planned.  Along with seeing a movie, Natalia got to pick where we went to lunch.  She decided on a cheeseburger at McDonalds pretty quickly.  It wasn't the most exciting pick, but it was hers so I agreed to it.

Saturday morning we have swim classes for both girls, but after we were done Natalia and I split off for our date.  First I wanted to go to the theater to get our tickets.  We were going to the Village where you can reserve your seats so I wanted to be sure to get a good spot  When I got there I found that they were trying out general admission for this showing just to mix things up so I was a little disappointed that we had put in the extra work to get good seats.  Then the ticket lady remembered that VIP seating could reserve their spots and there was no extra charge this time.

Natalia had never been to the Village area so she was a little wide-eyed as we walked through it. She loved the water fountains, the music, and the free play areas.  Because we had gotten VIP tickets, the ticket lady had mentioned if we want to buy food to come a half hour early.  This had Natalia second guessing her lunch location.  Her final decision was to go to McDonalds, buy the happy meal, and bring it back to the theater to eat.  I told her that unfortunately would not work so we just stuck to the original plan and went to Mickey Ds.  The movie was for 1:35pm and it was right around noon when we got there.  I ordered the food and Natalia played in the play area and made a friend- "She was wearing a purple shirt, blue pants, and Ariel socks.  At first she couldn't say my name, but I helped her say it right." She came right out when the food arrived and did a good job eating her meal.  While we were eating she asked me if I missed Mommy.  I told her that when we are apart I do miss her, but she is at home right now and we will see her after our date.

When she was finished I told her we still have an hour of extra time before the movie starts and she could play more, but she insisted we leave right away so that we wouldn't miss the start.  I told her it would not start before 1:35pm.  Everyone knows that is when it starts and they would not start it early.  She still wanted to get back to be sure we didn't miss a thing.  So we headed back to the Village and had about 45 minutes to kill.  We walked around a little and Natalia played on the play set there for about ten minutes, but she remained nervous that we would miss the movie so we headed in about a half hour early.

Being VIPs, we were given a menu and instructed to go upstairs.  I tried to make a big deal of Natalia being a Very Important Person, but she was in a rush to get in there.  I did get her to hold still for a couple of pictures.  The layout of the theater is pretty cool.

Miss VIP with the regular people below her

Antsy to get into the theater

Finally there.  Time to relax.

The VIP section of the theater is a little nicer than the normal area.  The theater is brand new so it isn't a big improvement, but you have leather seats, extra wide arm rests, and there is a server who occasionally checks in to see if you want to order food or anything else from the concession stand.  No waiting in line for Miss VIP Natalia.  I told her we didn't need any food since we had just gone out to eat.  I don't think she realized there was candy available because when the server came and asked if we wanted anything, Natalia shook her head and gave her back the menu.

We had to wait the remaining half hour for the movie to start and Natalia was a little antsy, but she used the extra time to study the theater.  She decided that she preferred non-VIP seating.  We were in the front row, center, but the front railing wall was just tall enough to block her view of the bottom of the screen.  She would have to sit on my lap the entire movie so she could take in all the screen.  This worked out well, the seat next to us was empty the entire time, but I got a better experience because I could hear her laugh, feel her jump, and enjoy the experience of the movie because she was so close to me.

The movie was great all the way through.  It was slightly more mature than the first one because Hiccup is getting older and having to deal with more in his life, but it still seemed like a solid movie for kids with plenty of fun dragon riding and humor.  Natalia looked up at me once after a particularly exciting scene and told me "Daddy, I like this movie".  She stayed locked in all the way through.  She sat up and leaned forward for some scenes, but mostly just sat back against my chest.  After it ended she told me again that she liked that movie.

She immediately wanted to get the movie at home, but I told her we would have to wait a while for that.  She said she had a lot of fun on our date. I told her we should do it again sometime.  Her eyes lit up and she asked, "We can see How to Train Your Dragon 2 again?"  I said, "Or we can see a different movie."  "Daddy, I don't know what other '2' movies are out to see."  Overall, the date was a great success and I look forward to more whether we see a movie that does or doesn't contain the number 2 or do something else entirely.

As we are leaving for our date