Up!

Huston has been obsessed with the movie Up! for weeks now. I won't tell you how often he watches it, or you might wonder about my parenting. It has been absolutely hilarious to watch him internalize and act out this movie. While other boys his age are pretending to be superheroes or characters from Toy Story or Cars, Huston is pretending to be Mr. Fredricksen, a 70+ year old man. Every stick he finds becomes his "cane" and he comments in a loud voice every time he sees an older person using a cane: "Look! They have a cane like Mr. Fredricksen!"

He has been pretending that his room is his house. He often invites me to come play there, but I always have to knock first. He likes to ignore my first knock, and then make a grumbling sound and answer my second knock just like Mr. Fredrickson does when Russell knocks on his door when the house is floating. Sometimes when I come to his "house" I have to jump into it because Huston informs me that his house is already floating.

One day Melinda told me (and I later experienced for myself) that she heard loud crashes coming from his room and found Huston throwing objects out into the hallway. He explained that he was throwing out the heavy things so that his house would float (just like in the movie, of course).

This weekend I had some clothes hanging up to dry and I kept walking past and finding one shirt on the floor. It is a shirt that ties in the back and has long strings. I finally figured out why it kept falling when I walked past and saw Huston grabbing the strings and saying that he was trying to hold his house down to keep it from floating away. As I walked away, he continued talking to himself, saying, "We can walk your house to the Falls, Bear Bear." (aka Paradise Falls, Mr. Fredricken's destination, for those not quite as familiar with Up!).

His creativity and quirkiness continue to amuse and amaze me. And, for the record, he thinks Toy Story is scary. Go figure.