The other night, while Avadore was watching Aladdin, I decided I should run upstairs, call my FIL and wish him a happy birthday. We had a short, pleasant conversation. My MIL was also there and wanted to chat for a bit, so I talked with her for a little while.

And then Avadore came upstairs talking about dinosaurs.

I didn't know he knew what one was, not really. He has some plastic ones, but still....

So we went downstairs. He had taken Aladdin out of the VCR and put in Jurassic Park, a movie I forgot we even had around. Now, if you recall, this isn't perhaps the best movie for a three-year-old.

So Avadore was allowed to watch part of it. You know, the safe, innocuous, happy dinosaur scenes. However, there's not a lot of those. A good portion of the movie is dinosaurs running after people.

But Avadore really, really likes the dinosaurs. A lot. So the movie was put away, and if one of us can watch it with him to show him the happy dinosaur bits, then it gets brought out.

I've gone to Netflix and have put some more three-year-old-friendly dinosaur movies in the queue. E.g. Dinosaur, Dinotopia, some documentaries that I'm familiar with, etc. And no -- no Land Before Time, at least not yet. (BTW, did you know there's ten of them out now?)

The crazy thing is, it's only been recently that I can even stomach dinosaurs again. I used to work in a museum where I spent a great deal of time with a dinosaur art exhibit. It wasn't the best experience. Besides, I'm an anthropologist, right? I study people. Except so many people think that I do dinosaurs. Very frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I was asked if I've seen Jurassic Park and if I took notes...

In any event, it seems like a funny twist of fate to have a little kid who loves the dinosaurs. But then again, I'm sure it's not uncommon.

And in terms of Jurassic Park, the cool thing about the movie was that the paleontologists got to meet face to face with their passion, something they were never supposed to be able to do. As someone who did a lot of paleo work and understands the connection that can exist between the present scientist and the past they spend their life with, that's something that I can appreciate and have been really touched by. Also, I liked some of the moral statements that were explored.

But how much dinos chasing screaming people can one watch?