Can You Read 4-glish?

Something I *LOVE* about my boy is his creativity. He has an imagination like you wouldn't believe. There are times when he'll have a handful of legos, a toothbrush and kleenex box and for the next 2 hours he's deep into an elaborate story of rocket ships, caves and heroes. When we put him to bed at night, he always asks for an "invisible" story... which means a story that we make up (not from a book). In the past couple of months he's started to direct these stories and tell us how the story goes.

He has also found a great game on PBS kids called "Dot's Story Factory" where he can draw pictures and then type captions about it. He loves to write his stories all by himself then have us read what he has written. I get a huge kick out of reading Austin's version of English. It actually makes sense in a way! Let's see if you can translate 4-year-old phonetics...

"Austin Johnson [age] 4. [To] Heidi."

"The monster ate Dot and Dash. Then Austin and Ruth flew in the box with wings."

"Add that recycled newspaper in to jugs."

*This one was spelled correctly!*

"They were using." [Explanation: Using a treasure map to get to the green 'X'.]

"Austin Johnson and his favorite color."

"And he has a favorite blanket."

"His favorite color is green."

That's Creative

The kids got creative for Halloween. They made a gingerbread "house", except that if it were to be a house, it would've been my project, so instead they made gingerbread cookies. After gobs of mess on the kitchen table, we moved upstairs and painted the tub with frosting.

What's the difference between a 3-yr-old and a 1-yr-old? About 2 pounds of mess.

We had our first snow of the season two days ago. Austin and Anthony went out to play and this is what they built.

Austin has beaten me to the punch - he wrote a book. His creativity also included writing it on post-it notes in green ink in some form of Swahili. But here's the interpretation... (if you compare this video to the one of Austin's tonsils, you'll notice his voice has changed. Less nasally and higher pitched.)

The full story is as follows. Look for it in stores near you:

Once There Was A Spider

Once upon a time there's an Austin and a mommy and there's a scary spider named Ruthie. And she scared mommy. And the spider walk walk walk to mommy. And the spider went up to mommy's head and the spider pulled mommy's hair out of her head. And mommy said, "Oh spider, spider. Where's my hair?" And the spider said, "It's right here in my hand." And my spider friends want their hairs. And mommy said, "Guys, I want my hair back! I want my hair back! I want my hair back!" And the spider said, "Ok. Ok, ok, ok." And the spider get the hair on mommy's head. And the spider get mommy's hair on her. And she drove. And the spider and mommy drive, drive to my house and the spider drive to my house too. And mommy and the spider drive the fastest. And Ruthie and Austin go to work at their office. The End.