Playgrounds and other people's kids and movies

Today Annie and I went to the mall, because I needed to pick up a couple of things for the weekend. The mall has a pretty nifty play area. Annie was enthralled. I think she mostly liked watching the bigger kids. Here she is, playing with one of the toys there:

But then this sort of shocking thing happened. Annie was standing up and holding onto one of the benches. Most of the older kids would either ignore her or try to talk to her a little, or sort of quietly play near her. But out of the blue, this little boy, not all that much bigger than Annie but much steadier on his feet, walks up to her, grabs her face, and then pushes her over.  She was very startled and started crying. The other child had absolutely no reaction! And when I came over and told him that it wasn't nice to push over little babies, he just stared at me with an empty expression. His parent was no where to be found.

This is at least the third time that this has happened over the last 6 months or so (the other two times were at a playgroup a few months ago). The other child's parents invariably either don't care or think it's cute. I'm pretty shocked. I would be totally angry and embarrassed if Annie ever did that to another kid. It seems to me that it's never too early to teach your child to be gentle with others.

In other news, I saw Sex and the City 2 last night at this new cinema in Dedham. It was the first movie I'd seen in the theaters since Annie was born.  The movie was disappointing. Really, they should've just stuck to the TV series instead of these painful movies that just emphasize how old all the actors are getting and how there's nothing left of a plot in their story. It was pretty sad. However, the cinematography was quite nice, there were at least 100 different costume changes during the movie, and there were some interesting cameo appearances, such as Liza Minelli.

The theater was an interesting concept - it has large seats, little tables that pull out from the seats, and a dinner menu. They serve the food during the movie. It had some pitfalls - like how they take your order while the movie is going on, and sort of block your view. And the service wasn't stellar. But it's kind of a nice concept. It's a brand new building, replacing the old Dedham Showcase Cinemas, which, from what I heard, was pretty ghetto.

I saw a preview for "Eat, Pray, Love," the movie. I read the book a couple of years ago, and just finished reading the author's second book. Both books were OK - the first was better than the second. It's funny that Julia Roberts is going to play the main character (who is also the author - the book was a true story, memoir type thing), and Javier Bardem is playing the love interest. Not a bad choice in actors.

Time to try being productive and getting things done before Annie wakes up from the nap!