Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

We found a new ride at Busch Gardens – motorcycles.  Toren dug it:

I used to love to run around on rocks.  Jumping from rock to rock was a blast and I would do it any chance I got.  I still find it enjoyable, but less so now that I have a bad knee.  Toren appears to have inherited this interest.  Here he is playing on rocks while we wait for a ride at Busch Gardens:

I finally pulled some more videos off my phone.  Here’s one of Toren during his costume parade at his daycare.  Since his daycare is at a hospital, the kids put on their costumes and parade through the hospital where the nurses give them candy:

To date we have not left Toren anywhere, locked him in a car, locked him in our house, left him alone by a pool, or, generally, done much to put him in harm’s way.  Well, there was the rather crazy bike ride through an alligator infested swamp.  And the hiking misadventure in Oregon when he nearly froze to death.  But other than those two incidents, I think we’ve been relatively safe.  Until just the other day…

Normally, when I have Toren in my car, which is a two-door Honda Civic, I help him into his seat then climb into the back on the passenger side and put his seatbelt straps on him.  A few days ago I let him into the car from the driver side door. He climbed over the middle storage compartment and climbed up into his carseat.  Absent-mindedly, I then buckled myself in and started the car.  Toren immediately started screaming and crying.  When I looked back to see what the problem was he was crying, “My straps!  My straps!”  I had, in fact, forgot to buckle him into his carseat.

I doubt it was him being safety conscious; he was probably just missing the ritual of me buckling him in.  Even so, it was nice to have him on safety patrol.

Toren has recently taken to repeating things we say, even if he doesn’t know what they mean.  As I was headed off to work one day, Debi said, “Bye, Cutie.”  (That’s her “pet” name for me.)

Toren then looked up at me with a big smile on his face and said, “Bye, Cutie.”