Mommy, when will I be big enough to fly?

Everyone who knows Ty knows he has a great imagination and loves to dress up in his current favorite character. These are some old pictures I found of him...

Ty being "Steve" with his official "Blues Clues" notebook

Ty being "Peter Pan"

Peter Pan and his friend Wendy, aka Madeline Miller

We all remember the "Woody" days, he dressed like this EVERYDAY for 6 months!

And of course, we had the official "Woody" jammies for night.

Or, for variety, the official "Buzz Lightyear" jammies. He wore these everywhere, I think the slippers even made an appearance or two at church.

I remembered the other night that once when he was probably 2 or 3, and dressed as either Peter Pan or Buzz, he was jumping off the landing of the stairs at the condo pretending to fly. After another unsuccessful attempt to catch any air, he came over to me, and with those big brown innocent eyes all teared up, asked "Mommy, how old do I have to be before I can fly?" I asked him fly how, like on an airplane? He said "No mommy, fly for real, like Buzz and Peter Pan". I explained to him that they were just pretend, that they were cartoons (he honestly made no distinction between cartoons and real live people), and that real live boys couldn't fly. He burst into tears. He thought if he kept practicing that at some point, he would really do it. It was so sad. The first blow of reality, and it hit hard. It's so sad that we can't all be like that, sad that we grow up and lose our imaginations. Ty still dresses up occasionally, now it's Star Wars or pirates, but I really miss my little Cowboy Woody, Buzz, and Peter Pan. He'd probably still dress up as Peter Pan had I not hidden the costume from him. The tights just got tighter and tighter, and Tyler grew bigger and bigger, and, um, suddenly they were no longer appropriate to wear in public, or around the house!