Scary Dream

I got a phone call at work today. It was Austin.

“Dad can I tell you a story about my scary dream?”

“Sure”, I replied.

“But you have to be very brave, okay?” he says.

“I’ll try my best”, I respond.

“I dreamed I was outside and slipped and fell over a cliff. I hid under a bush. It was kind of junkyardy. It was where the raccoons live.”

I asked, “Were you scared?”
“No, Dad, it was just my imagination!”

I just thought this was a hilarious story for a 3 ½ year old to be telling. And the setup to the story was fantastic. “You have to be very brave, okay?” He just makes me laugh so much.

So here’s a little background on the raccoon story. We’ve been working on our yard, specifically the front yard, and clearing out all the bushes and junk that have encumbered it for years. We have a street light in one corner of our yard that allows us to work fairly late into the night if we so desire. Angie happened to be doing just that a month or two ago while I was in putting the boys to bed (for some reason they wanted Dad that night). After a while Angie came rushing into the house rather frantically. She said she had been working on cutting out some bushes when a huge raccoon came toddling out of a bush over in the corner of our yard. It looked at her, but then slowly meandered along the side of our house and into our jungle of a backyard.

We’ve since conversed about this incident with some neighbors who’ve lived there a while and confirmed that they too have seen and had some run-ins with a raccoon family that meanders our neighborhood. No real problems to speak of, just that they are about and have been there for years. I think it’s kind of neat and would really actually like to see them, but no luck yet for me. Angie, on the other hand, has had her fill of them already and has proceeded to instill that same fear into Austin.

They had a picnic out on the deck one day and Austin threw part of his sandwich over the railing. Angie got mad at him and told him if he kept throwing food in the yard the raccoons would come eat it, then they would keep coming to our house for food, and might even get inside the house and eat all our food. So, Austin now is quite concerned about raccoons coming and eating all our food and is somewhat scared of them in general now.

Perhaps when we get our jungle cleaned up, our raccoon family will reside elsewhere. I hope I get to see them at least once before they leave though.

I Spy

We play a lot of games in the car while we travel. Doesn’t matter if it’s two hours to Grandma and Grandpa’s house or 15 minutes to Target. We rarely get to listen to the radio as we’re always playing games. One of Austin’s favorites is the I Spy game. Austin’s turns starts like this: “I spy with my little eye something that is…..” And then of course we try to guess. Mom and Dad’s turn must start like this: “I spy with my big eye something that is…” Naturally we have big eyes as we’re big people.

Well, after Austin’s swollen eye problem and visit to the ER this past weekend he recently started the game with: “I spy with my swollen eye something that is…”

Again the patented “That’s our son and he’s a genius” look was exchanged (see previous post for history/derivation of this often used look).

Movies, Music, and More

First of all, today is my Mom’s birthday, so Happy Birthday Mom.

Okay, now that that’s taken care of, lets move on with more fun stories about Austin. You know, all you parents of multiple children out there can attest that you love all your children the same, and Angie and I feel the same way with Austin and Lucas. But at this point in our lives, it’s Austin that provides us with all of our “blog fodder” and thus he’s the only one we ever seem to write about. We’ll have to watch Luke more closely I guess, and as he starts talking more and more I’m sure he’ll soon be making contributions here as well. But for now you get Austin Unscripted and Unedited (see Streaking post dated June 11th).

As we’ve mentioned before, Austin has an amazing ability to see and/or hear things and instantly commit them to memory. Here are but a few of our favorite examples of late:

1. Cruella Deville – Granted, Austin has seen 101 Dalmations more than once, but really, when compared to his other movies, I don’t know that I’d even put it in his top 10 favorite movies. So far as I know, he really has only seen it a few times. Yet, one of his favorite songs of late has been the Cruella Deville song. And he can sing the whole thing. And when I say sing, I mean really sing. He holds the notes he’s supposed to. He fluctuates his voice accordingly (I’m sure there’s some technical musical term for this, but neither Angie nor I have the first clue about singing so we have no idea where he gets his abilities – Jeff Corry can attest to my complete lack of singing ability from back in the mission days!). At any rate, Austin loves this song, loves to sing it, and sings it quite well.

2. “Panda”monium – Austin loves everything about Kung Fu Panda right now – AND HE HASN’T EVEN SEEN THE MOVIE YET!!! He even knows that Jack Black is the voice of Po the Panda. When Austin practices his Kung Fu he doesn’t say he’s Po the Panda, he says he’s Jack Black being Po the Panda. At any rate, as I said, he hasn’t even seen the movie yet, but a few days ago Angie and the boys were at the store and they saw Kung Fu Pez dispensers. Austin just had to have Po the Panda and said Lucas could have the tiger one, don’t know the name of that one. So Angie bought them for the boys, but they were put into the Crawford Store for Austin to earn. He gets Crawford Bucks for completing chores on his chore chart, and every Saturday we open the Crawford Store and he can buy whatever’s in the store (prizes and prices may vary as decided upon by Mom and Dad). At any rate, Austin decided to purchase his Pez dispenser this week from the Crawford Store and as he was playing with it he announced, “Prepare for pandamonium” and then proceeded with all his Kung Fu kicks and chops.

Angie and I just started laughing uncontrollably. Austin doesn’t really know why it’s funny, but then he just keeps saying it because it makes us laugh. I personally have never heard that on any of the commercials for the movie, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. It’s just something he heard and picked up on.

3. Indiana Jones – Again, Austin has never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, yet inexplicably he knows the theme music. On Sunday we were at my aunt and uncle’s house (down in Molalla, OR) where they have quite a sizeable yard and surrounding wooded area. They have a rope swing strung between a couple of trees on their property which Austin was playing on for quite some time. Meanwhile, Angie and I were up on the deck sitting in the shade, chatting with relatives, and keeping an eye on Austin and his whereabouts. Suddenly Angie taps me and says “Listen to him” and points down to Austin. We could hear him over at the rope swing singing the Indiana Jones theme. You know how it goes,

Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dummm
Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dum Dum Dum
Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dummm
Ba Da Dum Da, Da Dum Da, Da Dum Da…

We just gave each other our patented “Holy Cow, that’s our son and he’s a genius” look and started to laugh. Seriously, he amazes us all the time with his memory.

Monkey Vision Eye Hurting Goes To The Hospital

Yes, you read that correctly. It’s not a typo. It’s not a babbling, incoherent sentence. It’s merely a stated and true fact, Monkey Vision Eye Hurting did indeed go to the Hospital, and I’ll tell you how (sorry, this is going to be a very long post, as it was a very long weekend, and worst of all – we forgot our camera so no pics)!

It all started innocently enough. We had no plans of going anywhere. Saturday was to be all day working in the yard. Sunday to church, then home to relax. Easy enough, right? Oh you couldn’t be more wrong.

Saturday morning we got a call from my aunt Laurie literally begging us to come to my cousin Brandon’s Homecoming talk that Sunday. He just recently returned from his mission in Brazil, and while we’d heard about the homecoming, we weren’t really planning on attending as they live in Molalla, OR which is about 4 hours from us. But, the guilt trip phone call worked. Angie and I immediately started calling to get subs for our lessons on Sunday, and called my parents and told them we were on our way. My parents are about 2 hours away, then we’d be traveling together the rest of the way down to OR on Sunday morning.

When we got to my parents house, Austin and Luke started running around in the yard playing as normal. After they came in, Austin had a quick bath and got into his pajamas. A few minutes later my Mom comes in from the family room and says she thinks Austin needs Benadryl because his eye is starting to get red and puffy. We take a look and it was looking pretty swollen so Angie held a cold washcloth to his eye while my Mom and sister went to Wal-Mart for some Benadryl. After just a couple more minutes, and long before they returned with the Benadryl, his eye was massively swollen to the point where he couldn’t even blink. The whole area around his eye was red and swollen, but the worst part was that his actual eyeball was swollen too. All the white parts of his right eye were flaming with irritation and visibly swollen around his pupil. It looked like his pupil was a big hole in the middle of his newly engorged eyeball. It was getting worse way too quickly to wait for Benadryl, and had started spreading to his other eye as well, so we loaded him into the car and trooped off to the Hospital in Longview.

Meanwhile, of course, he’s crying and screaming about his eye, not because it hurt, but because he was scared and didn’t know what to expect. Angie was talking to him, telling him stories, and when he would allow himself to be distracted he would stop crying. So we knew he wasn’t in pain, he just didn’t know what was going on. One time he thought he heard Angie say his eye was going to pop and he really freaked out then. I don’t remember what she said, it certainly wasn’t that, but it was similar enough where we could understand why he thought that. At any rate, he was admitted immediately and then we played the waiting game to be seen and treated. Angie kept talking to him, telling him stories, jokes, anything to keep his mind off his eye.

One of the things we tried was to give him a secret spy code name for this mission he was one. I thought Raccoon would be good, due to the obvious situation with his eyes, but he didn’t like that one. Angie came up with a couple and those were rejected as well. Finally he announced he had come up with his code name. Are you ready for this? “Monkey Vision Eye Hurting.” It took us two or three times before we could even realize/verify that we were hearing him correctly. But yes indeed, he was to be special agent Monkey Vision Eye Hurting for this very covert mission.

Shortly thereafter the doctor arrived and checked him out. He wasn’t in any real hurry so we figured it couldn’t have been all that serious. And then of course he prescribed some Benadryl to aid in the relief. But he did also prescribe some extra steroids to further combat the problem, which was officially diagnosed as nothing more than an allergic reaction. To what we don’t know, but an allergy of some sort.

Austin was a terrific patient, and always has been. He lets all his doctor’s check his ears, eyes, nose, and throat. He takes deep breaths when instructed. He’s just a great little patient. Until you try to give him medicine that is. That’s when it takes Angie and two other nurses pinning him to the bed to get him to swallow. Alas, he survived the ordeal, and even got a stuffed cow out of it, which he promptly named Otis. For those of you not in the know, that’s the name of the cow on the movie Barnyard.

So there you have it. That’s the story of Monkey Vision Eye Hurting’s trip to the hospital. For those of you keeping tally, this makes three ER visits for Austin, and yes he is just three years-old. You’ll remember that his other two visits were results of a broken arm and a broken leg, both of which occurred before he was two. But those are other stories and memories, perhaps for another day and time.

P.S. As soon as the mission was completed, i.e. we were on our way back to Grandma and Grandpa’s from the hospital, Austin promptly informed us his code name had changed to Monkey Vision Eye Feeling Better.

Whoa, Yes We Call Him ‘The Streak’

He ain't crude.

Looka dat, looka dat!

He ain't rude.

Looka dat, looka dat!

He's just in the mood to run in the nude.

Whoa, yes they call him The Streak ("zipppp" kazoo sound)
Looka dat, looka dat!

He likes to turn the other cheek
Looka dat, looka dat!

He's always makin' the news wearin' just his tennis shoes,

Guess you could call him unique ("zipppp" kazoo sound)
- Ray Stevens

Tuesday is our garbage pickup day. As such, each Monday night we dutifully roll the garbage can out to the street for pickup the next morning. We also have recycling and yard waste pickup on rotating Tuesdays, such that each week we have two cans going out to the street. Yesterday happened to be yard waste day so we had put out our garbage can as well as our yard waste can. Both were picked up without incident.

So what’s all this talk about The Streak? Stay with me, I’m getting there.

Yesterday, after our garbage and yard waste had been picked up, I told the boys I was going outside to bring the garbage cans back up to the house. I’d only be gone a minute. Well, as many of you may know, we have been in the process of cleaning up our yard which is in a terrible state of disrepair. We now have all the bushes in the front yard cut down and sitting in three huge piles on the front lawn. As the yard waste bin was now empty I thought I’d stop off real quick and load it back up from one of these piles. Thus my one minute to grab the garbage cans turned into a few minutes as I filled the yard waste bin back up.

Finally as I was nearing completion, I heard Austin calling me from the house. I turned to see him and he had just come out the carport door and was hopping towards me. Why was he hopping? Well that’s what you do when your pants (and underwear) are down around your ankles!

Apparently, while I had been outside, he’d had to go potty. He’s a big boy and can easily go to the bathroom by himself. What he hasn’t quite mastered yet is wiping and pulling his pants back up when he’s done. He typically just calls for either Jason or I to come help him get cleaned up. But this time he called and called and no one came. So naturally he had to come find me.

Now, you have to understand the layout of our house to fully appreciate what he went through to find me. Our only two bathrooms are upstairs at one end of the house. The carport door (downstairs) is on that same end of the house, but the stairs are at the other end of the house. He had hopped the length of the house upstairs, down the stairs, then the length of the house again to get to the door he eventually came out, and ultimately had hopped a good portion of the distance to where I was before I could get to him and pull his pants up and usher him back inside.

And that my friends is why we call him The Streak!