Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Incredibles and Jack-Jack's clever super power

As I sit here at 2:30 a.m. feeding Miss Slane, I am reminded of a conversation MamaCue and I had about the excellent animated film The Incredibles, directed by genius Brad Bird. (SPOILER ALERT: This post reveals the secret super power of Jack-Jack, a character in the film which came out in 2004.) Thursday, we watched it for the first time since Slane was born.

Here's a brief synopsis: superheroes who once lived among us now must live "normal" lives, maintaining their super identities a secret. Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, now Bob and Helen Parr, have two super children and an infant: Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack. In interviews, Bird admits raising his own family was inspiration for The Incredibles' super powers. A father (Mr. Incredible) thinks he needs to be strong, providing and defending for his family. A mother (Elastigirl) must be flexible as she is stretched to her limits. Some adolescent girls (Violet) want to be invisible, while some little boys (Dash) are full of boundless energy.

I don't remember how Bird explained Jack-Jack's super powers, but now that we have an infant, we get why Jack-Jack has the super powers he reveals in the film. During a feeding, Sara shared her revelation about his powers. "The fact that he can go from fire, to dead weight, to monster: Slane does all of those things! It's what babies do."

They also poop through their outfits and spit up twice -- at least that's what Slane has done since I started typing this post on the Blackberry. And wear four changes of clothes in an hour. Maybe we can all return to sleep now?

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