Our Family: jaron

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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Star Wars in Concert...

was FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We went down to Sacramento this weekend to visit family and deliver things to people (baby swing to sister, infant car seat to sister-in-law, christmas tree to friend, quilts to aunt, etc.) Friday evening as we were driving to our destination for the night, Corrina heard an advertisment for something called Star Wars in Concert thaat was playing @ Arco Arena that night (Friday) @ 8pm and Saturday afternoon @ 3pm. When we got to Corrina's aunt's house where we were staying for the night, her aunt said something about it being a laser light show set to star wars music...sounded cool enough, really tempting. Then Corrina read in the newspaper that it was actually an 84 piece orchestra w/ choir playing John William's music from the Star Wars saga with a 3 story screen that they were playing scenes from all 6 episodes from in chronological order...with Sir Anthony Daniels as the narrator (for those who don't know, he played C-3PO in all six episodes). That sounded super-cool so I called Arco Arena up on Saturday morning to see if there were tickets still available and they say yes there is and the doors open 2 hours early because there was going to be a bunch of displays of things from the movies on display for people to look at. How could you pass something like that up?! This is a once in a lifetime type thing and they are only playing in 55 cities on the tour. So I make the exectuive decision to take the family to it.

(The one time we don't bring our cameras to Sacramento is the one time I wish we had...It was supposed to be a short trip we didn't think we would need them)

It, like I mentioned above, was FREAKING AWESOME! We got our pictures taken with someone dressed like Darth Vader (For those that know what it is, all the characters in costume there were members of the 501st Legion) (awesome!). They had tons of props, including Han Solo in carbonite, various blasters and light sabers, imperial helmets, ewok costumes, Boba Fett costume, etc. (awesome!) They had the voice of Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) be the announcer (awesome!). At the very beginning, they did the THX sound effect and the "20th Century Fox" fanfare (like at the beginning of all the movies) (double awesome!) There was a laser show incorporated into it (awesome!), pyrotechnics (awesome!), humor (awesome!). The music was awesome (awesome!), at times I forgot that it was being played live (awesome!). George Lucas was intimately involved in cutting and editing the video clips for the concert (awesome!). And for the encore, they played again the Darth Vader theme, but louder because they didn't have the video w/ sound effects/dialogue behind them (super double triple awesome!!!) I was half expecting for Vader himself to come out on stage and force-strangle someone :-) And the whole family loved it. Lara was dancing to the music, until she got tuckered out and fell asleep. I am most definately glad we went!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Update on the Duckies

As you may recall from this post, Jaron has a group of duckies that have been living in his bedroom. As I mentioned previous, we decided just to let them stay there until Jaron was ready for them to go away. Fortunately, that first night was the only night that they disturbed his sleep, and they haven't bitten him since. Additionally, since they didn't break skin when they bit, we haven't had to worry about salmonella or rabies or whatever :-) He has continued to keep his door closed during the day so as to not let them out. But now they are his pets. Approximately a week or so ago, while his door was closed, I saw him open the door, pop his head in, say "Hi duckies!" and then close the door again. And then, earlier this week while I was at work, Corrina reports to me that Jaron wanted the door left open so the duckies could come out. Then later they went back in and he closed the door again. I just can't help thinking that it is so friggin' cute and very humorous that his proverbial "monster-under-the-bed" archetype has now turned into his "imaginary-friend/pet" archetype. (For a decent overview on the subject of archetypes, as defined by Carl Jung, follow this link. Keep in mind that Star Wars is so popular b/c George Lucas studied the work of Joseph Campbell on the subject and modeled the characters and plots after common themes {"archetypes"} of mythology, etc.)

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Jaron and the Duckies

Last Tuesday, Corrina and I dropped Jaron and Lara off at our friends' house to watch them while we went to an appointment. They live (lived, currently moving to another house) next to creek so their son (age 8ish) raised some ducks from eggs. Jaron loves the ducks, from a distance, but if they approach him, he freaks out (as with any animal). We got their a little early and our friend hadn't got back yet but Jaron wanted to see the duckies. I let him see the duckies and tried to help him overcome his fear. When we came back afterwards, he wanted to feed the duckies srawberries and chase them all over the place. Hallelujah, it worked! Or so we thought. That night, @ 1 or 2 in the morning, he woke up screaming and crying and wouldn't calm down. I had to hold him til he fell asleep. We just couldn't figure it out. Then the next morning when I got home from work, he wanted to keep his door closed and we couldn't figure it out. Then at nap time, he started freaking out because the duckies were in his room. He even told me that one had bit his foot. Cute but sad. And we have been dealing with that since. Fortunately, I just have to hug him while he stands on his bed until he decides to lay down, and then there's no problem. We have decided to just let the duckies disappear on Jaron's terms. They are in his mind and very real so there's not going to be anything we can do to make him imagine them differently. But it is funny that during the day he still has to keep his door closed so the duckies can't get out. And he hasn't reported any more bites since that first night. So I guess we can let them stay :-)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Update

Well, its been a while since I've posted anything, and its been even longer since I've posted anything non-political. The last three weeks I've been taking a summer school class and really focusing on that. (Did you know that the masseter, zygomaticus, buccinator, digastric, and sternocleidomastoid are all muscles of the skull, as well as the orbicularis oris and orbicularis occuli?) I still have three more weeks of this but decided to give a quick update because this has been a crazy weekend that's not over yet.

Friday we drove down to Sacramento to drop Jaron off at my sister's place for a sleep over. After spending some time with them, we said good bye to Jaron and drove down to Berkeley. The purpose for going to Berkeley was so I could take the PCAT. Its kind of like the MCAT for for medical school but the PCAT is for pharmacy schools. After checking into the hotel, we had to run to Target to buy some Genteal Gel eyedrops because I forgot mine in Chico, after which we went out to eat. Saturday Morning, I was almost late for the PCAT because UC Berkeley is confusing and Google maps were a little inaccurate. Fortunately, they were only reading the general directions and filling out the front cover of the answer booklet with name, date, etc. etc. I have no idea how well I did and I have to wait ~6wks for the results to be mailed but it seemed more difficult than the practice test I had taken online earlier in the week.

Corrina dropped me off at the test center and went off to kill ~4hrs while I was testing. After the test, she comes and picks me up and tells me about her adventures with the pay-to-park parking lot at the Emeryville Mall. I'll let her give the details...I'll just say that it must have been really stressful, I would have flipped out.

After the test I call my sister to see how Jaron did: overall, pretty good, however:

He fought going to bed from 7:30 - 10
At ~2am, woke up screaming and had to be held (right?)
STILL woke up @ 6am
Was doing fine that morning, they went to my parent's to go swimming and he was having a great time.

It was ~1:30 when we called and he hadn't gone down for a nap or anything. We we got there @ ~4pm, he had just barely gotten wiped-out and had fallen asleep. We then drove to Corrina's Grandma's house because Corrina's mom, Corrina's brother's girlfriend and their kids were visiting from Wyoming.

Jaron didn't go down til late again and woke up screaming @ 2 or 3. I think he was partially traumatized from not having us the night before and the room being so dark he couldn't even see tat we were there with him. All his crying woke up Lara so it was quite the struggle to try to get them both to calm down and go back to sleep. Now we are goig to go to church, then off to Corrina's Aunt's house for a family get together. And after that, drive back to Chico today to start the week all over tomorrow. Oh, and did I mention that Lara is REALLY tired of the car seat? Fun times :-)

Friday, April 3, 2009

Jaron Being Cute

This is a video I took on a cheap video camera we let Jaron play with now. It was so cute. He loves fish, Itsy Bitsy Spider, I'm a Little Teapot, and the Pickle Dance (from Little Rascals). What's even cuter is the fact that he LOVES watching it...until he accidentally deleted it from the camera.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Jaron Escapes!

This is a video of Jaron climbing out of his crib. He did it a couple days to try to avoid going to sleep but then he would just climb out when he was awake so we took off the side to convert it into a toddler bed.