We all know that Tyler is a very obsessive passionate kid. By following this blog, you can see that he goes through various interests from time to time, and for every one of them, he goes all in. He doesn't just kind of like a number of different things--if he is "in to" something, it's all he wants to play, read about, imagine, draw, or watch. I thought it would be fun to try to chronicle all of Tyler's various passions that he goes through over the years. One day, we'll look back on this and appreciate all of those stages in his life. I'll go back to this post from time to time when I need to add new interests to the list.
Cars-where it all began
When Tyler was about one and a half years old, we noticed that like many little boys, he had developed a strong interest in cars. He loved the toy cars that he could drive around the house (and everywhere we went), but his favorite was the Disney movie "Cars" and all the characters from that film. He knew them all by name and could recite most lines from the movie. He'd be playing with his toy cars (he had every character) and he'd quote the movie with things like "float like a butterfly, sting like a beamer!" I can't even begin to estimate how many times we watched that movie during that phase. Luckily for us, it was a fun movie, and we never really minded watching it again.
Trains
I'm sure most little boys go through the train phase. You can look at the popularity of the Thomas the Train series (books, tv shows, toys galore) and you'll know that it's a typical part of toddler-hood/little boyhood. But, in what would be known as typical Tyler fashion, trains took over his world. He watched Thomas shows every day, as well as documentaries on trains. He drew trains of every shape, size, and color, and the first time he wrote his name, he added train wheels. He studied them, and could tell you about every part of the train from the knuckle-couplers to the coal tender, and the track switchers and engineers. Our house was constantly the site of any number of wooden or plastic train tracks set up in various configurations. He could occupy himself for hours building new train layouts and creating new worlds for his trains. One of his favorite places to visit was the AZ Railway Museum in Chandler. I'm sure you all remember many blog posts about our visits there--you can see a few of them here. We all learned more than we ever needed to know about trains during that roughly 3 year period that Tyler was a "Traniac." One of the most special mementos we have of Tyler's train stage is the original, sketched drawing that his great-uncle David drew for him. You can see it here. I still stop to admire it every once in awhile when I'm going in or out of Tyler's room. We will definitely cherish that piece of art as a memory of this fun time in Tyler's life.
Planets, space, and everything NASA
The space phase has been my favorite so far. It all started when we gave Tyler his own telescope for his 5th birthday. He jumped right into this new passion with full force. It all started out with the planets and outer space. He could tell you everything about each of the planets--their size, shape, order, number of moons--you name it, Tyler could tell you all about it. He even did a little tour of the planets for us one evening. He drew planets constantly, and he still has his the 3D planets that he and Dave made hanging from his ceiling. A natural progression from planets is to NASA, and Tyler became less obsessed with planets, and more obsessed with rockets, space shuttles, the Apollo missions, Apollo 13, and traveling to Mars. He was sure he was going to become an astronaut and be the first (well, maybe the second--in case something happens) person on Mars. We watched the movie Apollo 13 over and over, and he always wanted to play space pretend scenarios with his cousins, sometimes they played along and sometimes they didn't. Nearly every single book we read with Tyler for those 3 years were space related. Every gift anyone gave him, most of the shirts he wore--you got it, all space. Some of the coolest things Tyler did were the giant Saturn V rocket, the cardboard space shuttle with the rolling launch pad, and the 4 foot tall shuttle with tank and rocket boosters (click here for final results of that one). We took trips to the Challenger Space Museum and the California Science Center, multiple planetarium shows, and countless trips to the Gilbert Observatory. Did I mention that Tyler has been an astronaut for Halloween 3 years in a row? We sure have enjoyed the astronaut phase of Tyler's life. It still continues here and there, but he has had other interests that take over once in awhile. His space knowledge tends to creep into other things like his new interest in time travel. We all learned so much from Tyler's time exploring space, and everyone will remember this fun time in his life. I'm not going to lie, I would love to see this phase continue--someone has to explore Mars, why not our son?!
Now, this will be the hard part. It's easy to remember those three major stages Tyler has been through, and all of the other ones since space might take awhile to remember. That's why I want to write this post. I want to be able to read it one day and go back in time to all those stages that made us laugh and drove us a little crazy. Let's see if I can remember a few of them...
Wreck-It Ralph, the movie--he watched this one a bunch of times, drew quite a few pictures, talked about it non-stop, and even had a book or two about the movie.
Wild Kratts, a PBS cartoon about two brothers who are animal experts. They use "creature powers" to turn themselves into whatever animal it is that they're studying that episode. Tyler and his cousin Braden were both big fans of this show, and they'd pretend they were the Kratt brothers and learn about animals. They had the theme song memorized and would sing and act it out whenever it came on. I can still sing the whole song myself. He really learned a lot about a unique variety of animals from watching this show.
Despicable Me, the movie--this was probably the biggest movie obsession. We all watched it so many times--he and Ava both knew most of the lines. For Tyler's 7th birthday, we took all of his cousins to see the Despicable Me 2 movie when it came out around his birthday, and Aunt Tina made him a minion cake. It was right around the time of his DM interest that he started sitting down at the computer to either write scripts or re-write the movie. He would actually sit there and type it up, line for line. He wanted to do a Despicable Me 2 play, and had assigned parts to each of his cousins.
Tyler went through a brief stage around Christmas last year where he was planning to build a car, and most importantly, a car with a combustion engine. Not a model car, not a child sized car, but a full sized, operable car. He would work a little every day to detail all of the plans he was going to use--he'd write down the sizes of the various parts he needed and had drawings for how it would go together. Luckily, we were able to convince him that a 7 year old didn't really have the resources or the skill to build a car, but that he could save his money and work on the plans so that when he was 16, he could get started. For Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa Horihan gave him a model of a working combustion engine, so he did get some experience from that. He and Dave spent quite a bit of time putting that together. It was a fun thing for them to be able to do, and it satisfied his need to build a car.
The other thing about Tyler is that he can't just kind of like a particular movie. If he finds a movie he likes, he usually has to either write a sequel to the story, or maybe do a play about it. For example, he couldn't just like the movie Frozen, he had to write a screenplay for it, and make plans for all of his cousins and some school friends to re enact the play. He sat at the computer typing up the lines to the play, and thinking carefully about who would play each part. He couldn't quite get the difficulty in performing an entire play, however. We suggested to him that he just pick a scene or two, and start there. It was more realistic for that to happen, rather than an entire 90 minute movie. Nope, it was all or nothing, and nothing wasn't an option. He was convinced that he could get his school friends and cousins together to practice, and perform this play. If we leave things long enough, he loses interest, which luckily, he did with the Frozen play.
That brings us to his most recent passion--time travel and the Back to the Future movies. This phase started around Christmas as well. He had watched the 3rd BTTF movie a couple of times, mostly because of the scene at the end where the big steam engine pushes the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour so it could return to 1985. When he had asked for a $200 Lego space shuttle from Santa, he ended up getting a Lego DeLorean instead, and he was happy with that. He played with it quite a bit, and then sort of forgot about it until recently. He has now seen all 3 movies, and I think the first one is his favorite. Isn't it everyone's favorite? It's such a great series--even nearly 30 years later. Side note, did you know that in the second movie, the "future" that Marty McFly goes back to is 2015! I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any hoverboards or shoes that tie themselves. Maybe next year. Anyway, back to Tyler. He is 99% sure that he is going to build a time machine. If you ask him how he's going to do it, he hesitates to tell you because he's concerned that you might steal his idea. All we really know is that he needs to get some dark matter and space stuff, and there may be some involvement with black holes. He is first going to need to build a rocket to get to space to acquire these important things, but after that, he'll be able to build that time machine. Sounds like quite an adventure, doesn't it?
So, I believe that gets us caught up on most of the notable phases Tyler has gone through. He has definitely shown us that he is a very focused and passionate kid. He doesn't just kind of like a few different things--he is all in to whatever particular thing has grabbed his interest. He has become very knowledgeable about a few subjects, and we've all learned right along with him. It will be interesting to see what other passions Tyler has over the years, and hopefully we'll be able to keep track of them all. When new things come up, I plan to come back to this blog post to make updates so that one day, we can look back and relive all of those memories. Tyler is such a cool kid--sometimes his obsessions drive us a little nuts, but it sure is fun to look back and remember how big of a part of his life (and ours) they have been. One thing is for certain, he has big plans for his life, and we're 99% sure he's going to do some really great things.
