Sorry, Robert Downey Jr. There is a new Iron Man in town, and we have fallen head over heels in love with him.
Eric Hart, a professional prop maker, has an adorable baby boy named Collier who has been in the hospital since being born prematurely this past July. When Halloween rolled around, Eric got permission from Collier's nurses to dress him up in a costume, and he decided on the Marvel superhero for a very specific and heartbreaking reason.
"I came up with Iron Man, because he's been hooked up to all those machines and wires, and that's similar to what Iron Man went through," he told TODAY.com. "There are a lot of times when the baby is sedated, and you can't interact, so this is something we could actually do and say, ‘We may not be normal right now, but this is our new normal.'"
The mask was made of foam and took several days to make after he found a pattern online to scale down to infant-sized. Since posting the video, Eric says they have received messages from other parents around the world offering encouragement and even sharing their own stories of having sick children.
"It just resonates with them of being able to find a small moment of joy during months and months of physical and spiritual exhaustion," he said.
Eric and his wife are not sure when they will be able to take their son home as he has numerous medical complications, so it was important to them to give Collier a sense of normalcy even while he's surrounded by doctors and machines.
"Even though we're in the hospital, we're trying to do everything that a regular family would do and celebrate all the holidays," he said. "When he's older, he'll be able look back and hopefully see that his parents have basically been giving him a normal life ever since he started. We never thought of him as an interruption over this medical thing."
Joss Whedon better take note because we bet Collier will soon be stronger than any of those lame Avengers dorks.