Movies and Pirates and Airplanes oh my

WARNING: Minor Spoilers Abound, Matey.

As you may know, I have a horror of violence in movies where the kids are concerned, and we had decided that The Hunger Games was likely too violent for our kids.

There is also the issue that while twelve-year-old Leanna has an actual goal of watching a Rated R Horror Movie the day after her 18th birthday (such an adolescent thing to do), nine-year-old Abby is less bothered by violence on its own, and more by things like Noble Self-Sacrifice or violence done to the helpless (hoo, boy, last week's episode of Doctor Who, with a helpless herbivorous creature being killed by the Big Bad? She's cried through that scene twice now.)

But when Abby was at a sleepover last night, and she called to ask if it was okay for her to watch The Hunger Games, I thought fast. I came up with these points:

• I finally gave in on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which she did okay with
• I gave in on the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which she did okay with
• The last few episodes of her (and my) beloved Doctor Who have been very very dark in many ways, titles like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship notwithstanding. She does okay as long as there is a responsible adult with her watching these things, so she can ask questions.

So I told her she could watch it, assuming that the supervising parent watched it with them. And this morning she's her normal, slightly-grumpy Sunday-after-a-sleepover self. When asked if the movie bothered her at all she said no, "because it was just violent, not scary". I asked her if it was "dark" and she said it wasn't as dark as Harry Potter Five.

And as we had had a very busy day Saturday, she may not have taken the whole movie in; like her mother, she usually gets more out of something rewatching it later.

Saturday was a blast. We went to the Imagine Children's Museum (to which my mom got us season tickets) and it happened to be Seafair Pirates Day. There was a lot of time spent upstairs listening to pirate songs (and a damnyouautocorrect sequence between me and my mom that should not be shared on this PG-rated blog) and more time downstairs playing in all the cool stuff they have there.

Lizzy's favorite is as always the Imagine Air plane; a bunch of local Boeing engineers designed, built, and donated it to the museum a couple years ago, and she loves it. She flew to "Hawaii, and they Disneyland, and the last time I was the pilot!"

Busy day. No wonder Abby was numb by movie time!