Breakthrough

Today we took a giant leap forward in this house. As every post for the past many months now have had some reference to STAR WARS you know how important a topic it is in our house. Otto lives and breathes it. He spends all day playing Lego STAR WARS, reading STAR WARS books or acting out scenes he makes up with his action figures. Up until now he has not actually seen any of the movies. He knows every character and plot twist, but only from books and what we have told him.

That all changed today. Well it started yesterday afternoon. Otto has been on a streak of being so nice and kind it makes you wonder who the other child we had here last year was. Yesterday afternoon we were both a little bored from being stuck in the house so much with yucky weather I asked him if he would be interested in finding some Ewok speeder bike clips on YouTube. He has seen the Ewok song and thought it was very cute so I thought this would be a good transition. From there we slowly felt our way around more clips. A few seemed a bit scary to him so I would turn off the sound. A trick I learned from Papou and Uncle Matt. That eased his fears. 30 minutes after we sat down he was watching the battle scene over Endor followed by the Hoth battle scene. When eric got home he watched the light saber duel between Darth Vador and Obi Wan where Obi Wan dies. Because he knows the stories so well he can ask to see scenes he knows about.

Today eric brought home the first three movies. Once you are on a roll you might as well go for it. Plus, today is one of the first nice days we have had in a while (by nice I mean in the 40's cloudy and windy, it's all relative) and poor Otto has almost lost his voice and has a fever of 101.6. He needed to lay low and movies seemed like the perfect way to do it. He watched half of the first movie before wanting to go and play and a lot of Return of the Jedi. I am sure there will be more. The best part, he isn't scared at all, in fact he loves them! He gets so excited to see all the characters he has read about. He points out all the obscure droids in the background and knows all of their names.

This is a huge breakthrough for Otto. Not just because he loves STAR WARS and now he can say he has seen the movies, but because he can be very fearful of things and the movies were something he was really scared of. Even though he plays with Legos all day long and dreams of going to the Lego store, the first time we took him he went screaming out of the store and refused to go back in, not even to pick out a toy, because they have small tv's playing bits of Lego STAR WARS movies. He was TERRIFIED. This past time when we went to the store he talked a lot about the tv's before we got there, but was fine with them once we were there.

I can't begin to explain how much he has been changing over the past few months, but something is happening. Eric and I were saying that just in the past two weeks he has grown by leaps and bounds. I am sure there will be many more difficult hurdles to leap over further down the road, but right now we are in such an amazing place. For so long everything seemed like a battle with him. He was struggling to go against the grain with everything that everyday felt like a battle. The frustration was mounting between the two of us where I know I felt like I needed a break and I am sure he did to. Right now he is an absolute joy to be around. We are all having so much fun together.

I can see a real sense of pride in himself for finally conquering something he was really scared of. He did it all on his own. We weren't pushing him to watch the movies, he is the one who asked to see everything he watched. It has been pretty amazing to watch the transformation in him. Almost makes you feel like your hard work is paying off in some small way.