Headphone Happiness

I just thought I would share this idea that my husband and I came up with recently. We used to go the the show all the time, that was just about our favorite thing. Now that we have our son we have to rent movies. A few months back we first tried, and it was minimally enjoyable. Why? Our son is the lightest sleeper . . . seriously. Plus we have a very little house and a vaulted ceiling living room right outside our sons door, this makes everything louder (hardwood floors don't help either). In the beginning we had the sound barely on, turned on the subtitles, scootched the loveseat right up to the front of the TV and had to whisper to each other any movie comments or questions. I should also mention my son has a white noise machine in his room and we would turn on the bathroom fan (bathroom is right next to his room) to muffle more sound. As time went by our son could tolerate more sound but never anything very noisy, especially not stereo sound at an audible level for special effects and the such.

I thought of getting some headphones so we could watch movies at a more audible level. Our TV does not have a headphone jack but it is hooked up to our stereo. So we went to Best Buy and purchased 2 pairs of headphones (they are about $25/pair, not the ipod earbuds or walkman kind), an extension (so the headphones could reach the couch), and a splitter so we could hook up both pairs of headphones.

This worked fabulously. There are a few tiny things that take some getting used to though: 1) The headphone cords. 2) We can't really talk to each other while watching a movie because we are each wearing headphones. I should also mention that we have a baby monitor that has sound AND lights that we place directly in front of us while we are watching movies. This way if we don't hear the sound clearly (we almost always do anyhow) we see the lights and immediately hit pause and investigate. It may not be the movie theatre but it is something we can do together "after hours", well besides makin' more babies. Not yet thank you very much.

The investment was about $70-$80 which may seem like a lot but is well worth the investment to be able to watch movies kinda like normal people again.