Hangin’ Out With Atreyu

By Milli Thornton

Apart from the June 10K Days, the Fear of Writing blog has not seen much activity since mid-June, when I left for my vacation in New Mexico. The vacation only lasted a week . . . but I caught a bug while we were there. I didn’t get much chance to rest during our family visit and travels, so when I got home I collapsed into bed and let the bug overtake me.

After the worst of it was over, I couldn’t seem to snap back to my normal energetic and enthusiastic self. I took an extended amount of time off from my blogs and other online pursuits until I felt 100% myself again.

(If anyone is interested in the fatal mistake I made and how I *know* I could have avoided getting that sick, check out my article 5 Highly Effective Natural Remedies to Pack When You Travel, which opens in a new browser tab. Next time I’ll be packing more carefully!)

Now, to rattle this blog out of hibernation, I want to introduce you to a guy who is in no way related to the topic of writing (at least, not yet—but maybe he’ll grow up to follow in my footsteps). However, he’s a live wire and one smart little dude. We all need some of those “characters” in our real lives to feed our writing, right?

The character to which I refer is my four-year-old grandson, Atreyu. Get ready for some completely biased commentary from Gigi (my offline identity) as I share some of the best Atreyu photos from among the jillions I took.

Atreyu and Gigi

Ohio being a long ways from New Mexico, and the cost of airfare high, I had not seen Atreyu since he was 10 months old. Some of my online friends know how nervous I was about whether he would accept me. He had always loved talking with “Gigi” by Skype and phone, right up until he got old enough to want to assert his independence. After that, when asked whether he wanted to talk to Gigi, for a long time his answer was “NO!” I didn’t know how he would take to me in person, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about. Whew.

Left: With his insect-sucking gun | Right: With the football he got for his birthday

We planned our trip to coincide with Atreyu’s fourth birthday party. He actually got to have two parties—one at the waterpark and one at an amusement park—and he got an absolute ton of toys . . . but this made up for the years when his parents were struggling financially (and so were we) so presents were not as abundant.

Playing Wii

This was an experimental photo. I had never actually been exposed to Wii before and I was fascinated to see how it works. I took this picture while Atreyu was doing his moves to make Sadie the dragon dance around. If you look closely, you can see Sadie near my feet.

Nerf bullets and candy floss

These two are among my favorite pictures of Atreyu because they show his mischievous side. In the first one, he’s looking smug with his ammunition—a bit of a James Bond, ready to shoot someone (Brian, actually) with his nerf bullets. In the next shot, he knew I wanted a photo of his messy face after eating cotton candy at the amusement park, so he turned and gave me a cheesy look for the camera.

Dipping Dots and water at the amusement park

It was really hard to choose a shot from this sequence! Here he is with his Dipping Dots (weird little ice cream pellets) and his bottle of water (he’s a kid who LOVES to drink water: quite strange in my experience). In the other three shots, first he gave me a radiant smile. And then he looked over at the Froghopper ride—which he is afraid of—and made totally comical faces of fear as he described why he was not intending to ride the Froghopper.

My daughter Bonnie with Atreyu after bathtime

One proud momma with her cutey son. My daughter Bonnie lives with her partner Jerimi and his daughter Elise (Atreyu’s lovely half-sister) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In case you’re wondering where he got his cool name: Atreyu is named for one of the boy heroes in the movie NeverEnding Story.

Thank you for allowing me to indulge my grandmotherly adoration. For my next post we’ll get back to writing topics!

Milli Thornton

Milli Thornton is the author of Fear of Writing: for writers & closet writers. She is owner of Unleash Your Writing! and the Fear of Writing Online Course, where her mission is to put the fun back into writing. Milli also blogs at Screenwriting in the Boonies and Milliver’s Travels and coaches writers at Writer’s Muse.