That's some serious hormonal shidoobies, let me tell ya. Anyhoo. Now that my body is back to "normal" (ha, ha, as if...), I need to tell you about Austin's little thing he did in the car on the way home from PCH the other day.
As you know, Austin does this houdini thing getting his head off the headrest. I mean, if I tilt the chair back a bit, which I always do, he has to work kinda hard to pull his head forward against the neck brace and past the curve of the headrest in order to get it stuck leaning over on his arm. I really don't know how or why he does it, but it's his favorite thing to do, especially when I'm driving the 10.
So we were tooling home like normal from the hospital, and I glance in the the mirror just in time to see him pulling his head forward. And I swear...WE LOCK EYES.
I immediately say, "Don't you do it" in my most threatening, glaring mom voice.
And he immediately gets a crap eatin' grin on his face as he pushes his head further forward.
So I change my tone and encouragingly, sing-song "Get your head up! Get it up! You can do it!" all the while having one eye on the road and one eye in the rear view mirror. (Mom's have this amazing talent, you know). But he drops his head past the headrest and onto his arm anyway.
So I say, "Well, that's your fault! You did that! Now you're stuck and if you can't breathe, well that's on you!" (Ya'll know if I really thought he couldn't breathe I'd exit immediately and help him right?! Stay with me here....)
He just ignores me about getting his head up and is now watching his show.
So I go back to driving regular, you know, with both eyes on the road. But I can hear him starting to make fussing noises (which tells me he's breathing...), so I say, "You can fix that. Just get your head up....etc..." And I proceed to continue down the highway yammering at him while I am distracted for a minute by the, well TRAFFIC and crazy drivers.
So then I realize, huh, I haven't heard any whiny, screamy noises for a bit so I glance in the rearview mirror, and wouldn't you know HIS HEAD IS BACK UP ON THE FREAKING HEADREST, and he's just chill watching his show like, no big!
And I'm like, "I gotta tell somebody!" So now, you've been told.
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Ok, what's next. Ah yes. Austin, my very best friend now because we spent ALL of Fall break together since husband traveled some and the nurse, we finally got, was out sick.
I even asked Austin, "Are you my best friend?", and he turned his head up to me with a grin and vocalized "uh huh." So there you have it.
I kept seeing posts of all the moms taking their kids hiking and stuff for Fall break and we already did *Disneyland so I figured, heck, I'll take Austin hiking! The weather is pretty nice, and I've been meaning to visit the "accessible" trail that the City of Buckeye touted a while back at Skyline Regional Park.
The plan was to go Thursday morning, but alas, I ended up being stuck in the house all day waiting for Fedex to pick up Austin's lovely urine sample (hee, hee) that I so carefully collected over the past two days. (By the way, Austin is ok with me telling y'all about this because in a house full of boys, peeing and pooping is hilarious.)
So Friday, I loaded Austin in the wheelchair van for a jaunt down to Buckeye proper. My sister-in-law and her four kids followed us there which was super cool, too. It was about a 40 minute drive.
When we arrived, I jumped out of the van to go look at the map. The "accessible" trail looked to be a series of loops at the base of the hills. We unloaded ALL the stuff, made our way across the bridge, (past the grumpy old troll, through the big, green forest - sorry for a minute I was channeling Dora the Explorer), and to the "trail head".
Well we could pretty much see the entire thing from where we were standing, but we came all this way, we are going to do it.
I started pushing Austin's 100+lb chair and his self up the "slight" incline.
Sheesh. No one in a wheelchair is going to do that on their own! My calves and butt were burning! And the surface was *kinda* smooth. It was probably a stabilized decomposed granite or stabilized crushed stone (if I remember the terms correctly from my landscape architecture days....)
Wow. Now I know that while that surface might be accessible on a level path, add an incline and you're in for some work and will need help! But we pushed forward and wound our way back and forth through the loops reading some of the interpretive signage as we went.
But it didn't take that long, like maybe 20 minutes, and before you knew it, we were done. Kind of been there, done that kind of thing. So the trip driving there was twice as long as the actual "hike".
I'm glad we went though. I can cross it off Austin's bucket list. I took a few Go Pro videos (holding the phone camera behind Austin's head). Some times he sounded like he hated the experience, and sometimes he was just tolerating it, and sometimes, like on the bumpiest part, he seemed to enjoy it. Go figure. But you can only do the shakin' baby thing for so long pushing the wheelchair. So I was done.
Plus the second to the youngest of our crew had pretty much finished his popcorn.
So yeah, WE were done. 😀
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| We let a rock hold the camera to take our picture. It did a pretty good job. |
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