Jojo is growing up…. 🥲
He’s 10 now. Starting 5th grade.
Ever since I can remember, Jonah’s favorite movies or shows have been animated cartoons or family friendly Disney classics.
He’s watched every Disney Pixar movie probably hundreds of times. He’s memorized several of them and will even quote the spoken lines of say, Cars 3, even if you only play the musical soundtrack.
For a long time, Inside Out was one of our “Go-to” movies when Jojo was younger.
So today, Mama asked Jojo if he wanted to rent the recently released “Inside Out 2.”
He did not.
You know what he chose instead?
Twisters.
Yeah. That action thriller sequel about “tornado wrangling” where entire towns are destroyed by 200mph gusts of wind and hail the size of golf balls.
He watched both the trailers of Inside Out 2 and Twisters and he wanted to watch Twisters.
This from the kid who habitually gets angry with the sky for daring to have a cloud present during one day of summer.
This from the kid who constantly checks the weather app multiple times a day to make sure it will be “sunny” again tomorrow.
This from the kid who used to scream “I want ‘broken the windy!’ when a slight breeze would knock over one of his action figures, disrupting his nice neat line of toys.
Yeah. THAT kid who will have the WORST anxiety ever about the possibility of bad weather wanted to watch the movie about the most terrifying and deadliest weather imaginable.
…And he loved it.
He watched the whole thing.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but at the very least, that Jojo would be too focused on playing on his tablet to even watch it. Or on the opposite end, that it would trigger some anxiety-induced panicky meltdown about the weather suddenly uplifting our house.
But I was wrong. Jonah liked the “scary,” “intense,” “action-packed” PG-13 movie. And it wasn’t animated or made to be “family-friendly.”
sigh
Jonah’s getting older.
His taste in movies is changing. It’s bittersweet.
He hasn’t played with any of his Disney/Pixar action figures in years and he doesn’t want to even get them out.
He doesn’t even want to play with TOYS anymore. 😳
It’s so interesting. With autism and developmental delays (especially with a level 3 diagnosis), you never know how far your child will develop or how much they will mature as they get older.
Some part of me thought that we would always be dealing with holes in the dry wall from Jojo looking for “Bruno” (Encanto) or little dinosaur painted foot-prints on the furniture from Arlo “making his mark” (The Good Dinosaur).
And I had just accepted that “this is life.”
This will be “life” tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next month.
And the next YEAR.
But now that I see that Jonah is slowly moving past all of that, I feel like I have been taking this phase of his life for granted.
“This” actually ISN’T “life” for very much longer.
In fact, this part of “life” is nearly OVER.
…😳
So now I try to cherish the last few remaining years, or months, or days of Jonah’s childhood.
I try to pick him up and carry him at every chance knowing that one of these days, I will pick him up, put him down…
…and never pick him up again.
My little boy.
In your quest to grow up…
Please…Slow down.
Your Daddy’s heart can’t take much more.
#ausome