Nightly Nap and Nights at the Movies

You'd think that you wouldn't get a lot of time together with your husband with newborn twins in the house. But Adam and I have found that we have a nightly date, of sorts, and that it's more enjoyable than we might have imagined.

After some trial and error, we've come up with a rather good system for getting the twins through the night with enough food and us through the night with enough sleep.

We put our older two down at 8 p.m., and then try to get to sleep ourselves as soon after this as possible. We've made it around 8:15 a couple of times, but usually it's more like 9.

We call the sleep that follows our "nap". As in "we're not really expecting to sleep much, we'll take what we can get, and bedtime is really a few hours away." Low expectations are key.

When the girls wake up again - anytime from ten minutes to three hours after we lay down - we get up together and do a major feed/change/pump/feed again/swaddle routine. It takes about an hour. During this time, we've been watching movies. Usually we'll watch the first half one night and the second half the next.

And you know what? It's pretty pleasant.

Then we head back to bed, after having determined who's on first shift and who's on second. (We basically split the rest of the night into two halves, and one of us gets up with the girls when they need it the first half, and the other gets up with them the second half. That way we each get a few unbroken hours of sleep, which I hear is good for your mental health.)

So, movies. We've been watching a few. And I'm beginning to appreciate them a little more as an actual art form. I'm afraid I'm the sort of person who's long looked at movies and tv shows as second-rate art - way, way, way behind the written word. And my bias is still towards books over movies. But it's like the common "women-are-weaker-than-men" statement. Yes, most women are weaker physically than most men. But the exceptions are legion. And, likewise, there are a lot of movies that are better than a lot of books.

I'm also beginning to be really impressed with how many different things have to be done well for a movie to be even remotely good. And impressed at how often that happens. I mean, if the music's bad, it ruins the movie. If the cinematography's bad, it ruins the movie. If the acting's bad, it ruins the movie. If the writing's bad, it ruins the movie. With all these potential weaknesses, it's impressive that there are so many watchable films, where maybe not all the elements are stellar, but enough of them are good that you have a decent film.

I read an article recently that made an argument that film is the art form of our time, and that it's wise for Christians to be conversant in it, aware of it. I'm not completely sure how far I'd follow that (I think there's an argument to be made that if you have to actually do a sinful thing to act like you're doing a sinful thing, then you are sinning. E.g., you don't have to actually kill someone to act like you're killing someone, so it's probably okay to for an actor to portray a murderer, however you do actually have to touch the breast of a woman who's not your wife to act like you're touching the breast of a woman who's not your wife, so aren't you really sinning there? And if it's a sin for you to do it, is it possible that it's sinful for me to watch it? You could argue against it, but I think the possibility has to at least be considered), but I think I do agree that film (or possibly television or blogs) is the art form of our time. And I'm enjoying watching a few more movies than I usually do.

Two recent ones we enjoyed: Thank You For Smoking and The Darjeeling Limited. Here's my limited endorsement: they both made me laugh, they're both thought-provoking, and I'd like to see them both again, if only to add the thought-provoking process along a little bit. Oh, and the second one is really, truly visually gorgeous. (The second one also, inadvertantly, showed me what I now plan to do if I ever happen to be in a Hindu temple. I'll go ahead and just pray to Jesus and then cross myself. Of course!)

So, anything y'all would recommend we add to our library requests as we continue our midnight dates?

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell