Mission accomplished.

I managed to find my way to see Inside Out this weekend. It required taking the girls to the drive-in theater by myself, but that's a very low price to pay to get to see a movie before it's old news.

What's that? You think I'm nuts to take a one year-old to a movie? You're right, of course. But this is Mila we're talking about. She may not be an easy baby, but she likes to be difficult at times that make no sense. If I simply want to sit on the couch with her, I'm going to get my butt kicked. I can absolutely stick her in my lap at the movies, though. I especially can do so in the car. In fact, Miss Mila legit watched the entire Pixar short (which, why am I still all weepy about a couple of fictitious volcanoes? DAMN YOU, PIXAR) and a good ten minutes of the movie before falling asleep in my lap.

Friday night. Drive-in movie. Baby sleeping in my lap. Bag of gummi worms in my hand. The Big Kid at my side. THAT is a really excellent Friday night, you guys.

Perhaps the best part of the whole thing, however, are the conversations that have taken place since watching the movie.

Without ruining anything (I'll leave that to the rest of the internet), I'll just say that spending nearly two hours watching how an 11 year-old manages her emotions has been HUGE in creating opportunities to talk to Alexis about her emotions. We've even managed to talk about how as she gets a little bit older, she might have days when she forgets to let joy and sadness participate in the conversation. When that happens, Alexis might just make bad decisions just like the character Riley did.

Alexis swears it will never happen. She swears she could never ever consider running away or anything like that because MOOOOOM I NEED YOUUUUUUU. But, hey. We've started having those conversations and we're able to do so in a concrete way thanks to Pixar.

That's a super good thing.

It's also a super good thing that the conversations seem like they're going to be a thing for a while. Tonight, in fact, Alexis spent the ride home from dance rehearsal (that's a whole other longish story for another time) talking about her islands and her core memories.

(Sorry that this only makes sense if you've seen the movie. That just means you NEED to see the movie.)

Alexis decided that her islands are dance, friends, and family.

But.

But then she corrected that last one. "Mom, I think family is one of my islands, but you're your own island," she said.

And then I died from the awesome.