I have a massive collection of laser disks (they were these large platters, like records, only they were movies) and so far our kids are now old enough to watch two of them. The first one Max could watch is The Brave Little Toaster, which actually involves a number of advanced issues (like nightmares, jealousy, and a junk shop owner that guts appliances for their parts), but most of that seems to fly right over Max's head and he's into the car crusher at the end. "It maaashed them into little BITS."

This week the new favorate is Wallace and Grommit's Grand Day Out. This is a pretty good film for kids, though some of the jokes are going to be over their heads, but its good clean fun. Of course after that movie played, the disk flipped over and started The Wrong Trousers, which includes such issues as deception, psychological warfare, slavery, theivery and attempted murder. But in the end, after a spectacular model train chase, the good guys win, and all is well--I guess. Now to explain what's going on to Max...

Actually, the most interesting outcome was on day two (of repeated viewings), Max declared that he need some parts because he was going to build a rocket. To JonMarie's credit, she took him down into the basement (I'm still working upstairs where its warm), robbed my cardboard box collection for a rocket body, robbed my egg carton collection and borrowed my dry erase markers to create buttons for the control panel, robbed my cardboard tube collection for the rocket engines, and rummaged through my scrap wood collection for some 45s for fins. See, I've been planning ahead for having kids a LONG time. The results were satisfactory for Max, and he set out in his space ship (after making an emergency dash for crackers) to the moon.