Tides of March

Pap-Pap was just here for a visit, thank goodness. We had a great time with him, as always, and not only because of all the home repairs that were consulted upon and completed. Although, I have to admit, that element of his visit was pretty great. We built a gate! And when I say "we" I mean I held a couple of boards and sunk a few screws and then when into the house and cooked a big pot of Italian Wedding Soup while my dad built a gate. It's a really cool gate.

Whenever Dad comes out to California he insists upon going to the beach for a meal. I like driving down to the ocean just fine, but I've never really understood his almost pathological need to do this every visit. Not only does he live in a state that is on a coast, his house is on the water. It's not like Dad and Sandi live in Nebraska. But, that's his thing, and it's a small thing to ask so we try to do it, which is good because it always turns out to be a good thing. Being near the ocean, even for a short time...I don't know, it's restorative.

I didn't think we'd make it down this time. The most convenient time for such an excursion is the weekend, but the weekend was full of other things. Spring soccer game. Birthday party. Friends of mine in town from Pennsylvania. To say nothing of the fact that we went into the weekend as a sick household. Saturday was a recuperation day after a week of knock-down colds in the house. I don't think a one of us got out of our pajamas all day long, and that includes my dad. Not that such a thing is odd for him, come to think of it.

Given that getting to the beach over the weekend was an impossibility, I figured it just would not be in the cards for Pap-Pap's visit this time. I knew he would be disappointed, but what could I do? We had house projects to accomplish during the day, and then had to pick up Kiernan from school and get him home for homework, soccer practice, dinner, bath, and bed. How exactly would a trip down to the Pacific work into that routine?

Oh shush. Just do it, said a little voice in my head, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Wendy's. We--er...Dad--finished the gate just before we needed to pick up Kiernan on Wednesday, and I called an audible. "We're going down to Malibu after pickup," I told Dad. "We'll have an early dinner at a place we've never tried before." "Cool," he replied.

We picked up Kiernan and headed down to the Coast, to a little place in Malibu called Paradise Cove. I've been intending to check this place out for awhile now, so why not on this day? So Kiernan has to get his homework done. Why not do it down there?

Luckily because of some language assessments they're doing in school presently it's a light week for homework. Kiernan cleared his math homework and completed his daily log (an accounting of what went on that he discusses with his parents and we write down and turn in each day) while we waited for our food to come to the table. Then we had a lovely meal and headed out to the beach.

Paradise Cove is a cool little place. The food at the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe was just okay. To quote my dad, "It's beach food." But the ambiance is perfect and the service was great, and if you look at the homework picture above you see that after eating you just get up from the table and walk out onto the beach. The place has this great combination of public and private. It wasn't hard to get to, or to get a table, and once you've got the validation from your meal your parking is covered for the next few hours. Of course it's a Wednesday afternoon in March, so I imagine the place is packed at other times. But even though we got in without a problem it still felt like we were in a private area because of the way the cove curves around. There is a feeling of seclusion. On one side is this pier, which was sadly closed for some reason or other, and on the other end is a huge cliff. Kiernan and Pap-Pap went down that way to explore and I let them have some time together while I sat and watched the ocean and let my mind wander for a bit.

That's a picture of the two of them emerging from around the edge of the cove. If you squint you can see them silhouetted there in the distance.

I used the word "restorative" in an above paragraph. I suppose I have to admit my dad has a point. His insistence that we get to the beach during his visits isn't just for him. Not only can the man build a damn fine gate, turns out he's also got a bit of wisdom to share as well.

We miss you Pap-Pap, and are grateful for your visit and to Sandi for making it happen.

Picture of This Day

I awake to find Kiernan playing soccer out on the lawn with Sandi on another beautiful post-Thanksgiving day in Virginia.


Saturday, November 26, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Picture of This Day

What's the perfect activity for the day after Thanksgiving? Why playing on the beach and searching for treasures with Pap-Pap, of course.


Friday, November 25, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Picture of This Day

Relaxing with Uncle Mason on a beautiful Thanksgiving afternoon.


Thursday, November 24, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Prehistoric Aquarium

We have a wonderful huge roll of butcher paper.  It was a gift from Sandi and Pap-Pap a good while ago. It's good and useful for when we have a couple of boys over and they all feel like drawing together. I love it.

Of late, however, Kiernan just wants to draw on his cheap sketch paper. A couple of days ago he started a project of sea creatures. These are modeled on prehistoric sea reptiles, but they are creatures of his own design. He's ending up with a large piece, yet he does not want to start with a large piece of paper. What he wants me to do is tape together pages from his sketch pad. So I started by carefully taping together six pages. He drew a bunch of creatures. Then I added pages to it and he drew more.Then he asked for three more.

I kind of like the reasoning here. Writing happens page by page. Word by word. Imagine if you were tasked with writing a novel and were given three hundred blank pages, already bound, and told to fill those pages. Thunk, right there on your desk. Intimidating, no? But say you're given a page at a time, or three pages. "Just fill these pages. Go on. You can do that." Well yeah, I can do that!

He's created a poster-sized mural and is excited about adding to it, and he's doing it bit by bit. I love that. I also love that he's making up the names himself, as he goes, but not out of thin air. He's referencing his various dinosaur books and cobbling together names of real animals for his creations. That's how we get such wonderful names as Opthalmodon, Protochelys, and Insectospondylus. These are names he made up, but he did so using research.

Furthermore, he loves to introduce each creature to us, and he knows how big each creature is, and this is consistent and relative. So Opthalmodon is as big as our house. Criptosaurus is two-times as big as our house. And Ceresioclidus is three-times as big as our house. He also allows for depth of image as a function of size portrayal, so he can have a creature that is supposed to be small appear the same size as a larger creature because it is closer on the paper. So Insectasquid might indeed be much smaller than Megaceras, but it appears similar because it is closer to the viewer. We don't know how to draw images in perspective yet, but he envisions it in his mind.

I've said it many times before and I'm sure I'll say it many times to come, I love the way this kid's brain works.

[Here he works on a different project, a page-mural of flying reptiles. I love pictures of him doing stuff like this. Intent and concentrating. Beautiful.]

And after all...

Tonight as we talked about our days and weekends, we asked Kiernan about his trip to the Science Center. He said his favorite part was the Flying Monsters movie, which surprised and delighted me. I loved that part too. For one thing, it was a 3D movie I actually liked. For another thing, we bonded during it. But there were other parts of the adventure I liked better.

Like what you see above. Here we are in the little aquarium part of the center. We started up on the top floor, out in the open where you get to see the effect of wave motion on the kelp systems of the ocean.

Here's Kiernan observing the tank from that top floor with his friends Oliver and Mason. It's hard to capture what they're seeing with a camera, but here's my best attempt:

Kind of hard to tell through the glare of the tank glass, but there's a mesmerizing school of fish there that kept swirling around in a cyclone-like pattern. Around and around and around.  Fascinating and cool, but it felt a bit like watching a fish tank from the top. So Kiernan's friend Oliver insisted we head down "into the tunnel" to better see the fish. We told him we'd get around to it. He persisted, politely. We repeated that we would get to it. He insisted, again politely. We relented.

Once down there it was clear that Oliver was right. It was a much better view.  The boys grabbed these little placards showing all the fish and other life that could be seen in the tank. I have a better picture of this on my phone, but this one will have to do.

They parked themselves there and tried to identify every creature they could. Kiernan loves to do this at aquariums. Doesn't matter the size. This one at the Science Center. Various tanks at Disney World. The huge tanks at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. The every day tanks at our favorite pet store, Kahoots. Doesn't matter how many times he's done it. He loves to look at the list of what animals should be in the tank and find every one.

I'm so happy he has found a friend who wants to do this too.

How cool is that?

A Day Off

No school today because of Veteran's Day. One of the moms plans a trip to the California Science Center to see an IMAX movie and kick around for the day. I'm reluctant at first. The Science Center is way downtown and I've got a ton of things to do. Plus, I prefer to preview movies before taking him to a theater to see them. Plus, it's a 3D movie and I hate 3D movies. Plus, I don't think he's gonna like wearing those glasses. Plus, plus, plus.

I do a quick Internet search about the movie, Flying Monsters, and find out it's dinosaur--sorry, flying reptile, not dinosaur--related, and David Attenborough is involved. Kiernan was a pterosaur--Pteranodon to be exact--for Halloween and David Attenborough rocks planets, which should go without saying. I dither for only a moment longer and then commit. Friday at the Science Center with a bunch of seven-year old boys. Oy. Oh well, Dad. Take one for the team.

I don't tell him about the specifics beforehand. I just let him know before bed Thursday night that I've got a surprise for him for Friday. He wakes me up bright and early and his first words are, "Dad! Time to get up! What's the secret surprise?" Through the haze of waking up I tell him we're joining a bunch of his friends at the Science Center and seeing a movie called Flying Monsters but I don't know what it's about. He bounces off the walls as we get ready.

Upon pulling into the parking lot he sees the banner on the side of the building. He exclaims...

"Dad! It's about pterosaurs! I see Dimorphodon! I see Tapejara!"

He can't be more excited and I know I've made the right choice. Yeah, there's a lot of other things I should be doing today. So much to get done. But that exclamation makes it worth it. No matter what else happens this day, no matter that the day will totally wipe me out...it's worth it just getting to hear that tone in his voice.

There is no end to the things this kid will teach me.

Goodnight Africa, Night 111213

I skipped a couple of nights, it seems. I have excuses. I shall not share them. Instead, here's a field trip picture.

The hand you see is that of one of the educators at this week's 2nd Grade field trip to a place called Tree People. The educator is calling on Kiernan to answer a bunch of questions and thus win the first of five prize rings for his class group. The educator selected him based on his singular ability to smile without teeth...

...and Kiernan had to answer a few questions about what trees need to grow. This would be repeated with other students over the course of the session, but Kiernan was the first to do it.

He aced it.

For the rest of the field trip he got to wear the Seed Ring.

Goodnight Africa! Can't wait to have you back home!

Picture for This Day

Please excuse the blurriness of this picture, I snapped it late in the afternoon and today was an overcast day.

He got annoyed with me a little before this. Tuesdays after school are Oliver days, that is to say his best friend Oliver comes home with us after school on Tuesdays and the two of them get to frolic like mad for a couple of hours. After Oliver's mom picked him up Kiernan wanted to do a variety of things I said "No" to, like playing with a neighborhood boy and watching TV. As a result of my "No" answers he decided he was bored.

I simultaneously love it and hate it when he says, "I'm bored." I hate it because I just hate that statement. I think I always have been annoyed by it; I subscribe to the lyrics of the late 90s group Harvey Danger, who said in the song "Flagpole Sitta": If you're bored then you're boring...


I was teaching Health to 9th graders around the time that song came out, and so I heard the statement "I'm bored" an awful lot, and my annoyance calcified into full-on hatred. Not for the freshmen, mind you. They were teenagers. What can you expect. No, just for the statement. So when Kiernan says he's bored my knee-jerk reaction is a flash of anger. Or used to be. Nowadays I get a kind of glee out of it, because unlike some parents who feel responsible when their kid is bored and feel guilty and start tap-dancing, I just put it on him. "Figure it out," I say.

I've come to a peace about this. In fact, I kind of like it when he says, "I'm bored." I see it as an opportunity. A little part of me wants him to be bored sometimes. This is a chance for him to figure out what it means to entertain himself. Which, incidentally, he never fails to do.

Deprived of the easy solutions of watching TV or playing with his neighborhood buddy (the latter which he gets to do nearly every day), he sat down to draw. He did so grudgingly at first, of course, but in no time he was lost in what he was doing. What you see in the picture above is part of a monster project he's doing. The specific drawing above is a monster called Sea Terror and it's sort of a mini-project within the monster project, because Sea Terror is going to be huge and is going to take up at least seven sheets of paper. In that picture he's working on the torso and, in case you cannot tell, fully engrossed in what he's doing.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Goodnight Africa, Night 10

This week we're lucky to have Nana here for a visit.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011