Kiernan's favorite word--aside from Ma-Ma, of course--is the word 'ball'. As in..."BALL!!!!!!!!" The louder it is said the better. Everywhere we go he seems to see a ball. Even when we think he must be mistaken, he turns out to be right and there is a picture of a bear holding a ball hidden behind a curtain or something. Christmas time was the perfect time for him, as there were decorative balls everywhere. Good thing I had him with me so much of the time, or I might have missed many of them.

The picture of above comes from our visit to a school called CHIME, over the holidays. CHIME is a wonderful charter school that Wendy works with, but the purpose of this visit was Kiernan motivated. We are enrolling him in the infant/toddler program at the school, and they invited us to join them for their holiday party so we could meet the teachers and get a feel for the program a little bit. When they told us Santa Claus was going to be there, Kiernan decided to come along.

When we arrived, Kiernan showed his enthusiasm by being asleep.

He fell asleep in the car on the way to the school, and even walking into a room full of excited kids meeting Santa did not rouse him from his slumber. Kind of makes me feel silly for being so quiet during his naps. Before he was born, Wendy and I were determined that during nap times the household would run as normal. We would talk normally. Run the vacuum cleaner. Set off firecrackers. Practice our drum solos. In short, follow our routine. And he would therefore learn to sleep in spite of noise. We had visions of long, relaxing meals in restaurants, our baby in his infant carrier napping blissfully all the while, impervious to the din around him. Other parents would stare enviously. The bold ones would venture to ask, "What is your secret?" The Nobel Peace Prize was sure to follow.

It's funny how much flies out the window once the baby actually arrives. What I didn't realize when we were making naptime plans, is that naps are not really for the baby. Oh, sure the baby needs the sleep. But he'll get it sooner or later. Nope. Naps are for the parents. The idea of losing that twenty to thirty minutes became too scary to contemplate in the early months, so we tiptoed around the house and chased the cat, cursing in a whisper as she woke him up time and again. We turned off phones and shushed visiting relatives. We became the Guardians of the Nap.

Then we took him to see Santa and he slept in the guy's lap. Nice.

He did wake up, eventually, to find himself on a couch with his mother and Mr. Claus. This was a fairly disturbing moment for him, but then he received a toy train and found the ball pit and all was well with the world.

It was after Santa left that Kiernan found the ball pit pictured above, and I knew that whatever reservations I may have been able to drum up for taking him to the infant/toddler program after the New Year were pretty much moot. Any place that has a huge pit of balls is a perfect place to spend a morning. That other kids will be there to play with, well that's just gravy.

Big Old Jed had a light on...

I just love this picture. "Um...Dad...our gate is over there. Helloooooo."

In mid November, Kiernan and I took a flight from Burbank to Phoenix to meet Wendy. She was on a business trip that week, and one of her stops was in Mesa, Arizona, which is close to Phoenix. To make life a bit easier for her--five cities in five days can be a little rough when you're missing your little one--we caught her in her swing through Arizona, then went to stay at her parents' house in Phoenix while she finished her trip. She met us at their place for the weekend (as did my sister-in-law JoAnne and brother-in-law Mitch).

I was pretty nervous about the flight alone with Kiernan. The flight was only scheduled to be about an hour and a half long, but given how active he is now, and how much he wants to be independent and walking, I was prepared to count those minutes in dog years. We got to the airport early--because he wanted to...not because I'm anal or anything--and muddled our way through security. Once in the terminal, I figured I would give him some time to run about, maybe burn off some energy.

The terminal in Burbank, which airport is now called Bob Hope Airport, though I have yet to hear a person refer to it as that, is wide open, long, and carpeted, as you can see from the picture. We were flying in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn't all that crowded. He loved getting to toddle around the terminal, and was very helpful in pointing out pieces of trash that needed to be thrown away. He also wanted to help a few business travelers with their laptop power cords. Strangely most of them declined his offer of help. Some people.

As for burning off energy...I'm sure those of you with children of your own had a hearty laugh at that little fantasy. He spent a good hour running about the terminal, going nuts over all the people, and the kids, and for some reason the sprinkler heads embedded in the ceiling, and still when we got on the plane he just wanted to move move move. I held him in my lap, allowing him to stand most of the time, and he just kept turning around and around. "I need to see the people behind you!" "I need to see the woman beside you!" I need to rip the hair out of the head of the man in front of you!" And on and on.

We had three key things going for us.

First, the seat next to us, the middle seat, was empty. The last time we flew this would not have mattered, but goodness how this kid has grown. If a stranger had been sitting there he would have gotten his ribs kicked in, but on the bright side he would have shared a delightful meal of gummed quesadilla.

Second, the man in the window seat was the grandfather of an eighteen-month old. So he knew.

Third, the woman across the aisle from us was an angel straight from heaven. Her name was Anne, and she was just awesome. She wanted nothing more than to entertain Kiernan at every opportunity. She had some studying to do, but she was always ready to drop her reading the moment Kiernan focused on her. She talked to him. Retrieved his sippy cup when her threw it to the floor. She even tickled his chin when he found that arching his back way over so that he could look at her upside down was a great game. Without Anne, I don't know if I would have made it.

Anyway, we both survived the flight, which was made all the sweeter by the fact that Kiernan got to see his Gammy in the airport when we arrived in Phoenix.

Getting to see his Mom after being away from her for a few days was pretty good too.

A long time ago, in a galaxy right here

Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it?

Much has gone on with Kiernan and his parents over the month and a half since my last post. I did not post in November as I began writing a novel at the beginning of that month. My sister-in-law JoAnne--who is a writer in San Francisco--threw down the gauntlet, challenging a few friends and relatives of hers to join her in an event known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, a project which takes place during the month of November. The challenge, basically, is to write a 50,000 word novel (or the first 50k words of a novel) in that month's time. I was leery of doing this, since my primary work as Toddler Wrangler gives new meaning to the phrase "full-time job", but I decided to take up the challenge anyway. In addition to JoAnne, my father-in-law Rance (a.k.a. Grance) had decided to do it. The thought of that poor man, with all of his responsibilities to the golf course, taking time away from the driving range to write a novel pretty much shamed me into it. Plus, I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to see if I could adapt my writing from a regimen of eight-hour days to a "nap-window" writing cycle...that is, writing as much as I could, as fast as I could, during naps--Kiernan's, not mine--and late at night.

The good news is that I found that I can indeed adapt to writing when Kiernan naps, or when both Kiernan and Wendy are asleep for the night. It is not as gratifying as writing full days, but when added to those full days I do get--Wendy is great about working these into our schedule--it works out. The bad news is I have not checked the words I've thrown down so far to find out if they are any good. So I have no idea. This is fine right now, as I'm still working on the novel, but once it's finished and I have a look at the actual work, I may start crying. And JoAnne may be in for some nasty phone calls.

The upshot of all this is that during the month of November, whenever I sat down at a computer it was almost solely for work on the novel. Nothing else got my attention during that month. Including The Creeping Kid (the blog, not the actual kid). This is understandable, perhaps, but hugely problematic since November held so many important moments in Kiernan's life. Most notably, his first birthday, but let us not forget the case of stomach flu that swept through our house like a plague. Ah...the pageant that is life.

So, as I post over the next few weeks, I will try to work in the events of November (and early December), as well as pictures from that time, in addition to covering the new and exciting works of Kiernan as his second Christmas approaches. Hopefully, in time, I will get caught up.

If not, well, at least I'll have a novel to show for it.

The Tin Man sees his father's costume for the first time. 

A more inclusive Wizard of Oz. (Our friend Heather and her son Sam, as pirate and bee respectively).

The Oz Family Singers. Baby looks perfect. Mom is super cute. Dad was unavailable so they found this guy at a garage sale. 

The Tin Man Cometh

First Halloween! Drum roll please.

Kiernan has the good fortune of having the coolest godparents in the world. They are incredibly generous, enormously talented, and happen to love him like nobody's business. One of them, Daniel, is a genius of costume design, so Halloween was his moment to step forward and shine. We expected him to do a good job, but he totally knocked our socks off.

We went back and forth for months trying to decide what Kiernan was going to be for his first Halloween. The word "we" at the beginning of the previous sentence is somewhat misleading. What I mean when I say "we went back and forth for months" is that Wendy brainstormed ideas for various costumes and I said the words "Jedi Knight" every time the subject came up. When I didn't say that, I said dopey things like, "He could go as a miniature version of one of the dudes from Reservoir Dogs." Looking back, it appears I was less than helpful.

I have two costumes I have worn for the last, oh, fifteen years of my life. Aside from one year when I let Wendy convince me we should go to a party as a pirate couple--that was the Pirates of the Caribbean year, and the real reason she wanted to do this was that she wanted to put mascara on me, hoping it would make me hot like Johnny Depp...um, yeah--I have pretty much worn one of those two costumes to every Halloween event. Those two costumes are, Jedi Knight and Reservoir Dogs dude.

Now, to be sure, I love the films associated with both costumes, but what really drove me to dress up as Jedi Knight and Reservoir Dogs dude was convenience. I have elements of those costumes in my wardrobe. Most helpfully, I have this awesome black bathrobe that goes all the way to the floor and has a huge black hood. Slap on some leather boots (leftovers from my Busch Gardens Ren-Faire days) and a cheap fake light saber, and presto-whammo, instant Jedi. Reservoir Dogs dude is similarly easy: old black blazer, thin black tie, black pants, cowboy boots, sunglasses and Zippo lighter. For good measure, a plastic disposable razor gets tucked into one boot. Simple, easy, stress-free, and aside from the constant guesses that I'm "one of the guys from Blues Brothers, right?" usually a respectably minor hit at parties.

So when it came time to think up costumes for Kiernan, it seemed natural just to get him on the same track as his father right away. That way we could go as a pair of Jedi Knights. His mother had other ideas.

As it turns out, better ideas. Much better.

One day she busted out with the idea that Kiernan could be the Tin Man for his first Halloween. My mouth was already opening to object, when she said, "It'll be perfect! Because of his new heart!" When she got to the part about his heart I shut right up, realizing I was never going to prevail against the brilliance of the idea. It was just too good. Then she mentioned that she should go as Dorothy. I edged toward the door. But there was no escape. "What are you going to be this year, honey?" I opened my mouth to speak. "And don't say Jedi Knight." I closed my mouth. "You have to pick something from Wizard of Oz."

For months I pretended I was going to be a flying monkey. Or Toto. I even threatened to hijack her Dorothy costume and go as the girl myself (without shaving my goatee, mind you), but she greeted that last idea with such demented enthusiasm that I dropped it immediately. I'm telling you, she's good.

In the end I went as Scarecrow, both because it was easy to cobble together and because Daniel reminded me, when he was over at the house one day taking Kiernan's measurements, that it would be thematically appropriate. Dorothy met the Scarecrow first, before meeting the Tin Man.

The Tin Man costume, as you can see from the pictures, turned out to be flat out awesome. Daniel first came over to take measurements, as I said above. Then he retired to his magical costume workshop (otherwise known as his dining room), spending long hours and late nights hammering away. One day he came back over and did a fitting. Wendy and I were giddy with excitement, unable to contain ourselves at how cool the thing looked. He took the head-piece and the pants back to his workshop to make alterations. Finally he had Kiernan and I come over to pick up the finished product.

Kiernan first wore the costume to a costume party at CSUN (California State University, Northridge, where Wendy is a professor) the Friday before Halloween. He was a huge hit. He next wore it to a party thrown by the Mom's Club Wendy joined a couple months ago. Again, a huge hit. We walked into the park and mouths just started hanging open. I'm not kidding. It was like being on the red carpet at the Oscars or something. Mothers dropped their plates of food and dashed for their cameras. Parents stood around us, calling Kiernan's name and snapping pictures. Video cameras rolled. Impromptu interviews transpired. Luckily, Kiernan took it all in stride, pretending to be more interested in the balloons that decorated the park than in the attention being lavished upon him. Smart kid.

The final time he wore the Tin Man costume was on Halloween itself, for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Our good friend Heather brought over her son Sam, dressed as the cutest little bee you ever did see, and we ventured out into the night. Our first house was next door, home of the World's Greatest Neighbor, Ramon, who came to the door in a Darth Vader outfit that would have put my silly Jedi costume to shame. Kiernan pointed at him and said, "Da-da." I was a little disappointed at this, not because he called somebody else by my title, but because he already seems to know the big reveal of Empire Strikes Back. I hope that doesn't spoil the films for him when we finally get to watch them together.

The godparents showed up and two of them, Daniel and Darren, joined us as we went through the neighborhood. His godmother, Renee, went back to the house to pass out candy. Trick-or-treating went very well. We even managed to pick up a lion in our travels. A family with an eighteen-month old moved in down the street and we've struck up a friendship with them, thanks to Wendy. We stopped by their house for candy and they answered the door with their little boy William in his lion costume, mostly. He was somewhat scared of the hood/mane, which worked out perfectly for us as a brave and fierce lion would have been totally wrong. His mother, Jessica, pulled on his hood and hit the streets with us. We did get a few funny looks because of Sam the bee and his mother Heather, the pirate. I guess those people have never seen the director's cut of Wizard of Oz. A bee and a pirate figure in quite prominently, in that version.

We all went back to the house to watch Kiernan eat dinner and Sam crawl around being cute. By this time Sam's father, Joe, had showed up dressed as Genghis Khan. When you see a bee and a pirate together, you really do get the sense that all they need to complete them is a Mongol conquerer on a motorcycle.

In the end, thanks to Daniel's talent and skill, and Wendy's tenacity and creativity, Halloween 2005 was a stunning success. The only problem for Daniel is that he has set the bar incredibly high for the years to come. At first, upon completion of the Tin Man, Daniel said, "Next year he's going as a box." But as the night progressed and the accolades came pouring in, you could already see the gears turning. And not just with him. With Darren, his husband and Kiernan's other godfather, you could see it too. Darren is to makeup design what Daniel is to costuming. Both of them just brilliant and creative. I could tell they were up to something. This was confirmed late in the evening when he asked me, "So...how many years do we have to wait before Wendy will let us make Kiernan into Chucky?"

Looks like my days of being a Jedi are truly over. Oh well, I guess change is good. And the Force will always be with me, especially when I get out of the shower.

You got time to duck?

Kiernan can quack now. Sort of. Let me just say he can kind of quack, but he can definitely growl. No question about that.

He's got two little board books from Discovery Toys that he really likes. They are called Boomering Books, and they are bound so they flip up vertically with a rattle attached to the binding and a piece of cloth with a link on the end. The link on the end clips onto stuff, like a stroller or a shopping cart or a space shuttle, making it easy to take the book anywhere. They are very simple books. One is entitled "Baby Faces" and it just has...um...baby faces in it. A picture of one face on each page and a caption describing what the baby is up to. Thinking baby. Curious baby. Laughing baby. Embezzling baby. The other one has a picture of an animal on each page. Kiernan loves these books. He will make me read them to him again and again. Given that there is only one word on each page, however, I have to help out the narrative a bit. While I read the animal book, I make animal noises to correspond with each page. This is not as easy as you may think, as there is a whale, a dolphin, a zebra and a giraffe in this book. I have no idea what noise a giraffe makes, so on that page I just say, "The giraffe goes, 'Hi...I'm a giraffe!'"

Today Wendy came in while I was reading this book to Kiernan and said, "If he ever goes to Africa, he's gonna be really confused."

His favorite animal sound from that book is a tie between the gorilla and the sea lion.

At any rate, on the tiger page I just do a jungle cat kind of a growl. Wendy and I both do this same growl whenever we see him playing with his little stuffed tiger, a fellow who shares his crib named Justin. Justin was a gift from one of Wendy's education colleagues; this gentleman's son--who, in a stunning coincidence, is also named Justin--had to undergo heart surgery as a child. His family sent us the little stuffed tiger before Kiernan's operation so he would have a comfort animal during recovery. They sent a tiger, in particular, because their son had taken a tiger with him when he was in the hospital. Accompanying the stuffed tiger for Kiernan was a cute picture of the human child Justin in a tiger suit.

The other day Wendy was growling with Justin (the stuffed animal one) while playing with Kiernan in his room. Kiernan growled back. Ever since then he has been able to growl when we do, and very often will growl if we just hold the tiger up and ask, "What does a tiger do?" A couple days later he also picked up the ability to growl at the picture of the tiger. Now, he has seen many more dogs than tigers in his daily comings and goings. And for goodness sakes, he lives with a cat. We tell him incessantly that puppies say "woof" and the kitty goes "meow". Heck, the kitty herself tells him that all the time, often when he is napping (did I mention that I used to be a cat person eleven months ago?). So his first animal noise, as anybody would expect, is a tiger noise.

Which I love.

I'm a huge fan of the jungle cat population. The fact that my son is starting off speaking their language, without having to be raised by apes--or some weird jungle bear--is kind of nice. And please, no jokes about the father's simian heritage.

Oh yeah, I think I opened this with a statement about quacking. Kiernan has indeed quacked, although he is far less likely to do so on command. In fact, I've only heard it a couple of times. But it was there. The same night Wendy got him to growl on cue, she also got him to do a sort of quacking noise. There's a picture of a duck in the board book, and when she said that a duck goes "quack quack," Kiernan responded with something like, "kak kak." It wasn't a perfect mimic, but it was definitely in the ballpark. There was intention there. And a fairly good ear. Later when Wendy got him to do a very vague approximation of a meow, he very clearly switched to a higher pitch from his tiger growl to do so. The boy's got skills.

So there you have it, more minutiae than you could have ever hoped for. I bet you can't wait for my post about his first book report. I know I can't.

I already know how I'm gonna start it.

"This post is about..."

Echo echo echo

On Thursday Kiernan had his second follow-up with his pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Ferry. You may recall that his last visit--two weeks after his surgery--went very well. Kiernan was given an EKG and the amount of oxygen saturation in his blood was measured. Both of those tests turned out fine. He looked and sounded so good, in fact, that the doctor told us to stop giving him the medications we'd been giving him since the operation. This second follow-up, a few weeks later, was a bit more extensive as it involved him getting an echocardiogram.

An echocardiogram is a test in which ultrasound is used to examine the heart. Basically, if you've ever been pregnant, or been to a doctor's appointment with a woman who was pregnant, or watched "Friends" when Rachel was pregnant, it's similar to the test the doctor uses to show the baby's heartbeat in the womb. Actually, it's a more like the extensive ultrasound that shows whether the baby in the womb has a fully developed spinal cord, a four-chambered heart, the correct amount of toes, etc. The one where the expectant mother has to lie there on the examination table with a full bladder for what seems like forever while the radiologist gets all the pictures she needs. Except in this case the patient is an extremely squirmy almost eleven-month-old who NEVER likes to be on his back, much less be still for twenty minutes at a time. Fun.

This kind of situation is where our policy of not parking Kiernan in front of the television set every day really pays off. Wendy and I have been loathe to let the little guy watch tv, so it's still a novelty. We've got all those genius baby videos on dvd somewhere around here, but because recent studies have linked television watching in infants to ADHD we don't use them. Not yet. Actually, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended in 1998 that kids under two years old should not watch television...at all. At first we were totally paranoid about this, treating the television as if it were some kind of virus dispersal device that would infect Kiernan if he even glanced at it. We'd put him in his bouncy seat facing us while we watched during dinner, or go through all kinds of contortions while holding him so he couldn't see it, or try watching from another room using a dental mirror. We've calmed down a little now, but still don't put on programs for him to watch. Aside from catching bits of the news that I have on during the day while I'm chasing him around the house, and watching his cousin Jay flip channels when Jay visited with his family, Kiernan really hasn't watched television at all.

Except, ironically enough, at the doctor's office.

The technician doing the echocardiogram is clearly used to having to keep kids entertained for extended periods of time. Her little office is tricked out with all kinds of baby friendly enhancements. A big fish hangs from the ceiling (it's not a real fish...don't worry) and she has a lamp with a rotating shade that throws colors and shapes on the walls. Best of all, however, is her VCR and television. We got there, took off Kiernan's shirt, and put him on the exam bed. She popped in a "Baby Einstein" video. And that was pretty much it. He was mesmerized. Wide-eyed and gape-mouthed. He tried to get up a couple of times during the echo, but Wendy just held onto him and redirected his attention to the tv and he was fine.

This video tranquilization always disturbs me. I know it is necessary because he has to stay still for the test, and I'd rather this be accomplished by television than by medication, but I just find the quickness with which a video sedates him to be disturbing. There's something wrong about it, something scary. Like he's being reprogrammed or something.

I'm sure if I had another kid or two I would change my mind about this pretty quick. I honestly don't know how single parents and parents of multiple little ones do it. How they can get anything done in a day is astounding to me. I suppose that's where television comes in. It is kind of disappointing not to be able to use the television as a babysitter as I assumed I'd be able to do going in to this thing, but oh well. I guess I can wait for that until he's two. I hope he enjoys all the personal attention and reading and stuff in the meantime, because once we get to November 29, 2006, that's it. The teevee is taking over.

Anyway, after the echo was complete, we went into another examination room to await the nurse. She came in and weighed Kiernan and measured him. He's 20 lbs. 10 oz. now, so he's back to gaining weight. They have a weird way of measuring him, however, that never seems to show much growth. The nurse has us lie him on the exam table and then marks the runner of paper under him with a pen up at his head and down at his feet. She measures the distance between the marks because that's easier than trying to measure his body, but the measurement always seems to be 29 inches. As long as I can remember going to this doctor Kiernan has been some length around 29 inches. I know Kiernan is getting taller by the simple fact that he's starting to hit his head on things he could cruise under previously, so I'm not worried. I'm just annoyed that nobody can seem to measure him properly. We liked this method of measurement at first. It was a welcome change from the enormous board Kiernan's pediatrician uses and with which he whacked Kiernan in the head during one of his early visits. I wish we had more choices than inaccuracy or concussion, but that seems to be all that's on the table at present.

After the nurse left, Dr. Ferry came in to listen to Kiernan's heart. He brought with him another doctor from UCLA, presumably an intern or resident or Padawan or something, and that guy listened too. Both of them were very happy with how Kiernan's heart sounded, then they went off to watch a tape of the echocardiogram and they were pleased with that as well. This means we'll be seeing Dr. Ferry less frequently, which is sad because the guy is the best doctor in the world, but good because it means Kiernan is better. Our next appointment is three months away, and after that, assuming all is still going well, Kiernan will see him once or twice a year.

Of course, after he turns two the television will have to deal with things like that, making doctor's appointments and whatnot. Since it's hooked up to a TiVo, though, I am at peace that this will go smoothly. The TiVo really is an amazing piece of equipment. I have every confidence that it will assist our tv in raising a well-adjusted, healthy member of society. All while recording my Duke games and Wendy's assorted Lifetime Originals.

What a wonderful world.

Pirate in Training

On Saturday Kiernan went to his first birthday party. We decided to have it early. November is going to be a busy month and, well, anyway, people place far too much emphasis in our culture on things like birthdays and Christmas presents and whatnot. We don't want to raise a materialistic child. I mean, we only have one TiVo, and that's all we ever intend to have. So we just decided to have a quiet little celebration with just the three of us. No presents, no party, just a cake made out of hemp and---

Okay. Okay. Joking.

Kiernan has not had his first birthday yet. His mother can stop freaking out now. He's going to have a full blown birthday with all the trimmings at the end of next month. Therefore...his father can start freaking out now.

Especially now that he's seen the video.

What I meant by the first line of this post is that Kiernan attended the first birthday party that he has ever been invited to this past Saturday. The party was for Kiernan's friend Julia who was celebrating turning three years old. The theme: Princesses and Pirates.

Julia is a very cool little girl. I know this because she's my friend too. Now before you start raising eyebrows and getting worried that I'm gonna be one of those dads who is forever co-opting his kid's friends as his own so he can be the cool dad with the Magnum, P.I. mustache--I think you know who I'm talking about, Dad--let me just set your minds at rest. Julia's mother, Brenda, is a colleague of Wendy's. She used to be one of Wendy's students, actually, and now the two of them are friends. Once when Wendy and Brenda were working on some education thingy at the house, Brenda brought Julia along for the day. This was before Kiernan could crawl, or really move at all on his own; we had to constantly hold him and entertain him. As opposed to now, when we have to constantly chase him and entertain him.

So Julia basically had to babysit the two of us, Kiernan and I. She did this with the cunning use of dinosaurs and dresses.

Julia is--or was when she was merely a two-year-old--fond of two things mainly: dinosaurs and Disney princesses. She had this awesome dinosaur A-B-C book--book's title: Dinosaur ABC, if you must know--a board book with a page for each letter of the alphabet, and a dinosaur for each letter. 'B' is for 'Baryonyx' and 'P' is for 'Parasaurolophus'. There are cool facts about each dinosaur and lifelike pictures and little diagrams that are supposed to show how big the dinosaur in question would have been as compared to a person, but which, by the luck of proximity, actually show what appears to be dinosaurs crapping little human beings. Maybe that's done on purpose. Some sort of children's book's editorializing. God I hope not.

Anyway, the book is very cool. And Julia, this extremely sharp little girl, knew how to say all the dinosaur names. From 'Euoplocephalus' to 'Quetzalcoatlus' (basically a way to force your friend and mine, the pterydactyl, to fill the 'Q' slot), she pronounced all of them without a hitch. I could tell because the names were spelled out phonetically on each page. And we must have read each page about three hundred times that afternoon. Julia, in addition to being cool, was also, shall we say, persistent.

But that's not the only way Julia kept me and Kiernan entertained. Oh no. Did I mention that her other passion was Disney Princesses?

Julia also had a collection of Disney Princess dress ornaments. While she was reading the dino-book to us, she hung the dress ornaments on my outstretched hand. One dress suspended from each of my fingers. The other hand held Kiernan. There is a picture of this somewhere. I'm not in a hurry to find it.

So it was Julia's birthday party on Saturday. The theme, as I said, was Princesses and Pirates. Julia went as Belle. Kiernan went as a pirate, as pictured. Wendy took Kiernan to the party. I, alas, missed the affair. But, as I mentioned earlier, I did see a video snippet of the proceedings, and that was enough. Good Lord, was that enough. That thing looked like total pandemonium. Sort of a Blair Witch Birthday Party. [This is NOT a comment on Wendy's camera work--Ed.] Little girls all over the place, resplendent in perfect Disney Princess dresses. Parents moving about after them like slightly more benevolent versions of the characters in a zombie film. One of those ridiculous rented blow up party jumping contraptions taking up most of the back yard. It makes me shiver just thinking about it.

And Wendy cannot wait for it to be our turn. Oh well. At least I have my dinosaur book. I loved Julia's so much--and was so effusive in my praise of it--that she and her mom, Brenda, bought us one after their visit. No matter what happens, I'll always have that. While the book does give Pterydactyl the short end of the stick, at least Triceratops gets his due. The fact that Triceratops beat out T-Rex is a big deal. At least to me.

What pirates have to do with any of this, I have no idea. I do know two things, though.

1. My little boy looks darn good in a pirate outfit.

2. When he sees the above picture and can finally voice what his expression is clearly saying--"Mom...Dad...Why?"--I will calmly say, "Son. I'm sorry. But your mother did it."

I think I'm getting the hang of this parent thing.

Kiernan vs. Ferdinand the Bull. 

Once more unto the kitchen, dear friends...once more! 

One Small Step for Creeping Kid

Kiernan took his first official steps yesterday, Sunday, October 16, 2005, at about 6:00pm.

He has been cruising around the house quite comfortably for some time now. He pulls himself up on furniture and walks around holding onto it, or pulls himself up on us, grabs one of our hands, and leads us around the house. Or simply in circles. He likes walking in circles. Once he started doing this the general assumption was that he would start walking on his own shortly thereafter. He wasn't in a rush, however, and was content to maintain that level of mobility for awhile.

On Saturday I was following him as he crawled around the house and I looked away for a couple of seconds. I think this was the end of the USC/Notre Dame game. When I looked back, Kiernan was standing there playing with a cat toy. That's no big deal as he stands up all time--and Cali, our cat, has never said anything about the toy--except this time it occurred to me that there was nothing around him he could have used to help him stand. He had risen to his feet totally on his own.

By Sunday he was starting to rotate his standing postition without holding onto anything. When Wendy got home, late in the afternoon, I told her I had a feeling that today, Sunday, would be the day. We went inside to play with him, trying to get him to walk from one of us to the other. He's never gone for this. He gets too excited and his momentum gets the best of him and just drives him into the floor, or collapses him into our arms. So we kept playing. At one point he needed to get around Wendy, and that's when he did it, took his first steps. He wobbled around her, only falling down when he couldn't negotiate a maneuver around Ernie (a stuffed gift from NaNa that plays "Splish Splash" on a plastic electric guitar).

Later on, when Wendy was on the phone describing this to somebody, he did it again, this time in a straight line on the tile floor of the kitchen. He made it a few steps, then went down. I was there to catch him.

Sunday night is bath night. As I got the bath ready I called my dad to tell him the news of the walking. As I did this, Kiernan picked up the empty toilet roll holder (it's kind of like a decorative paper towel holder that sits on the bathroom floor) and proceeded to lead his mother on a march around the house. He was holding onto her with one hand, and holding the toilet roll holder with the other hand, brandishing it like he was a drum major and she was his marching band. He spent a good solid twenty minutes just walking his mother from room to room like this, nonstop.

As we got him ready for bed, Wendy looked about ready to collapse. She'd just gotten home from a tough week on the road, and we'd worked most of the weekend, and now she'd gone on a pre-bathtime forced march. I looked at her sprawled on the floor and thought of the coming day, Monday, which is one of my long days with Kiernan (and her long day away from him). I said, "I don't want hear it. What you just went through for twenty minutes, that's going to be my day tomorrow."

We both laughed, happy that our son is doing so well, and not a little nervous as, yet again, he's about to raise the bar.

Oh well, I can use the exercise.

"The bravest thing I have ever done."

Gammy and Kiernan were playing in the kitchen last week during Gammy and Grance's visit. Playing in the kitchen essentially involves four things:

1. Crawling around and picking up morsels of whatever from the tile floor and eating them. The terms "edible" and "non-edible" do not apply as, in our house and the surrounding environs, the latter term has ceased to exist. Everything goes in the mouth. Therefore, everything is now edible. Quad erat demonstrandum. The game for the adult is, of course, interception of said morsel.

2. Opening the special "Kiernan Drawer"--the lowest and deepest drawer, filled with baby-safe containers, measuring cups, and funnels--emptying all of the contents of said drawer, then sliding them across the tile floor and chasing after them.

3. Trying to open the non-baby-safe drawers and cabinets and getting angry when they won't open because they have locks on them or an adult is holding them shut.

4. Trying to eat the cat's food. Adult's role is, again, interception.

I think Gammy and Kiernan were playing Game #1 when all of a sudden Gammy put her bare foot down beside Kiernan and made a weird, oogy noise. I think it was something like, "Eeeewwwww!" I asked her what what wrong.

"That is the bravest thing I have ever done," she replied.

"What?"

"I just squished a spider with my bare foot. Kiernan was about to eat it."

Those of you who are far away, who are jealous of Gammy for getting to spend a week with Kiernan, take note. When you get your chance, this is what is expected. Spider squishing with bare feet. And other brave acts.

You have been warned.

The Faceoff. 

It Takes a Village...

...to eat a piece of bread.

I mentioned in the last post that Kiernan had started feeding us. He continued to improve this new talent by feeding his Gammy--Wendy's mom--all week long. Wendy was out of town for the week on a business trip, so her mother and her stepfather, Rance, were gracious enough to drive to California to help me out. Kiernan and I have had a couple of days without Mommy before, when she did overnight business trips, but we had never gone for a whole week without her. We were both a bit nervous. Fortunately Wendy sensed this and invited her parents to come and visit.

Lucky for us they took her up on it. Having them here made a world of difference.

Kiernan and I drove Wendy to the airport Monday morning. We arrived there in time for his breakfast feeding, which Wendy obligingly did sitting in an out of the way spot in the terminal. We waved bye-bye to her until she disappeared in the line for security screening, then we went back to the car for phase two of breakfast: cereal (incidentally, it's usually the other way around). After Kiernan finished his cereal we went for a little walk in the airport, just to give him a chance to stretch before what I anticipated would be a long car ride home. As there was a motorcycle wreck on the freeway, I'm glad I did that. Once we got back to the car, Kiernan immediately fell asleep and stayed napping all the way back to the house.

Shortly after we got home, Gammy and Grance arrived for their visit. That's right, I said "Grance". That's what he goes by with Kiernan, much to his chagrin. At some point several months ago I got tired of saying the words "Grandpa Rance" and just decided a contraction was in order. Thus was the name "Grance" born. And let me tell you, he just loves it. Absolutely loves it. Actually I think it is growing on him, but at first you could tell that he thought it was weird. To his credit, however, he has never overtly objected. At least not to us.

A word here, then, concerning the nicknames of grandparents.

Kiernan has eight grandparents. He has a Na-Na. A Pop. A Pap-Pap. A Sandi. An Omi. A Big Daddy Jake (I know, I know). A Gammy. And a Grance. Eight wonderful grandparents and not a Grandma or a Grandpa in the lot. The kid's gonna be a teenager before he gets their nicknames straight. Oh well. It's our fault. We let all of them come up with their own nicknames themselves, save poor Rance (who, it should be noted, offered to take the mantle of Grandpa until we shortened it, proving that we cannot be trusted, even when we complain). We should have just settled on two all-encompassing grandparent monikers, one for the girls and one for the guys, and left it at that. But we let them decide. I guess part of this was that I never got over the story of how my grandmother, my mom's mom, reacted when I came along as the first grandkid. I believe she said--God rest her soul--"What's he gonna call me? Can he call me Charlotte?"

At any rate, they're all fine individuals who have been great parents, so I suppose they've earned the right to be called whatever they want. In fact, I think I'm going to start brainstorming the name Kiernan's kids will call me, starting now. If you have ideas, feel free to chip in. As it stands I think I'll go with "Yo Dawg". It's got that hint of keepin-it-real without losing the essential classiness that embodies who I am. Yo Dawg. Yeah.

As for Big Daddy Jake...um...I think I'll cover that another time.

As soon as Gammy and Grance got here, they hit the ground running. Gammy demanded I hand over the baby and banished me to my office to get to writing. Rance procured a pair of clippers and went to work on the ridiculously overgrown ivy that lined--did I say lined? I meant engulfed--the driveway. He did a bang-up job on it too; by the end of the day you could actually get into the car without having the sensation that the hedge was trying to claim you as its own.

Gammy did a lot of the feeding during the week, which is why I mentioned that Kiernan was practicing so much of his new talent of feeding others on her. She was a good sport through it all, taking various bits of bread, half-chewed cheese--she tried Muenster on him, though right now he seems to prefer orange cheese and cheesefood--egg, turkey and capicola ham as Kiernan proffered them. She'd try every once and awhile to beg off, saying, "No no. I couldn't. Really you've given me enough. I'm full." Kiernan would have none of it, though, and would continue holding out the morsel until she took it.

At one point I was busying myself in the kitchen during a feeding and he held up a piece of bread for me to eat. I came over to his feeding table, bent down, and took the bread in my lips. We got the timing of the transaction wrong, however, and it sort of hung there, pinched between my lips. Before I could pull it into my mouth, he reclaimed it and popped it into his own. He smiled hugely and Gammy and I laughed. The game now has a new angle that has provided us a way out of eating half of his food. All we have to do is hold the food in our lips, and he takes it back and happily eats it, making us feel sort of like bird parents. This is especially good news for Wendy, for sooner or later he's going to offer cheese to her. The ultimate test will be to see whether she can stand to even hold it between her lips for a few seconds without freaking out. I'll keep you posted.

During one of our bread exchanges, a piece of bread fell to the floor. I beat the five-second rule and returned it to his table. He promptly held it out for me. I took it in my lips and he took it back, then he offered it to Gammy. She took it in her lips and he took it back. Satisfied that the tidbit had made sufficient rounds, Kiernan went ahead and ate it.

I can't wait until he starts using a spoon on his own. On days we have mashed peas, I plan to be out of the house. Or maybe I'll just have his Na-Na visit. I'm sure she loves peas.

Good for the Gosling, Good for the Goose

Kiernan feeds us now.

A couple posts back I did a rundown of what kinds of food he's eating now, telling about how we introduced Kiernan to solid foods and how well he's taken to them. Since that time we have tried a few other things that he is not so crazy about. Yet. We tried a bunch of steamed vegetables. He likes to arrange them on his table and plate, and tear apart the brocolli, but that's about it so far. We also tried some avocado. Wendy had heard from a couple other moms that their kids loved avocado. Not so with our little guy. Kiernan puts it in his mouth and it immediately comes back out. He does enjoy squeezing the bits of avocado in his little fists though, so there's that.

We will keep trying and I'll keep you posted. Experts say a kid may have to try a new food ten or fifteen times before he learns to like it. I was convinced those "experts" work for the baby food companies, so I was leery of this advice. I still went along with it, but I was leery. Then this week the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a bunch of new recommendations for parents, stuff about avoiding SIDS and giving kids pacifiers at night and what-not. In that announcement was this same advice about introducing new foods to babies. So I'm downgrading my "leery" attitude to "suspicious" and going from there. At least until Kiernan shows an interest in actually eating the brocolli and avocado.

And, most importantly, the pasta.

Yep, you read that right. The kid won't eat pasta. This is bad. My grandfather is Italian. My mom is very proud of this. So am I. My son not liking pasta is not an option. Not only is it a cultural imperative that he eat and love Italian food, but as the cook I demand the right to cook pasta on a regular basis. It's too easy a food to prepare--and too enjoyable to eat--not to have it in my arsenal. Also, I refuse to spend the next eighteen years not being able to placate my little boy--and, let's face it, myself--with macaroni-n-cheese.

Kiernan really, really likes bread though. Cantaloupe too. The other day Wendy was feeding him and I dropped a bunch of chunks of cantaloupe on his feeding table. He went right to work on it, munching away happily. After awhile he looked at Wendy thoughtfully, then held out a piece of the cantaloupe for her. She leaned forward, opened her mouth, and he popped it in for her to eat. He found this quite amusing and gave her another couple of pieces, doing this funny little squinty smile all the while. We found it just adorable.

The next day he was working on some pieces of bread and he did the same thing with me, only instead of a nice fat chunk of fresh cantaloupe, for me he held out a soggy piece of half-gummed bread. Nice. Well of course I couldn't refuse. I'm trying to get him to accept all this new food from me. It wouldn't do for me to reject the only piece of food he had ever offered me. So, I ate the soggy piece of bread. And he was delighted.

The only remaining question for Wendy, then, is how many Weight Watchers points you have to assign to the bits of food your baby feeds you. I think you get a pass on food your baby feeds you, personally, which is probably why Wendy is suggesting we introduce ice cream next.

I, for one, am all for it.

The Hundred Acre HollyWood

We took Kiernan to see "Disney Live! Winnie the Pooh" on Saturday. The show took place at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, the venue that has hosted the Academy Awards since 2001. Actually, when I say "we" I don't just mean his mother and I. Née Née, Kiernan's godmother, was there too. She was the impetus for our going at all; she did a good amount of work on the show (she works for Disney) and called us a couple of months ago to suggest the three of us take Kiernan to see it. We in turn called his doctor to make sure Kiernan could go to a big show a few weeks after the surgery, and he gave us the green light.

I am constantly amazed at how becoming somebody's dad has changed me. A year ago I would have found attending a show like this to be nothing short of excruciating. As the title suggests, the show is pretty much a Winnie-the-Pooh story brought to life on stage, with actors in giant character costumes and huge happy-go-lucky musical numbers. Think Disney on Ice without the ice. Renee's excellent work aside, I would have sat there surrounded by gleefully screaming children rolling my eyes and clutching my head. Now...well...Now things are a bit different.

I loved the show.

Absolutely loved it. I thought it was fantastic and fun and hilarious. I had a great time. Thing is, I saw very little of the actual show because I was staring at Kiernan so much of the time. He was just flat out enthralled by the whole thing. He loves being around people, so just going to the Kodak Theatre was a thrill for him. Children running everywhere. Clowns hamming it up with the crowd. He was so excited. Then the show started and he was mesmerized. Just ten months old and he's such a good theatre goer. Far better than his dad.

This is the third show we've taken him to. First we went to see a new musical my friend Karen wrote, the excellent "Atalanta". I think Kiernan was six months old at the time, so I didn't know how he would react to being in a dark theatre for a full length show, but he was fantastic. Next Wendy took him to see "Legends of King Arthur"--another children's show written by Karen, only this time one of the actors was me. He was great at that show too. So I wasn't surprised that he was well behaved at the Pooh show; I was surprised, however, with how much he actually paid attention to the show, how much he got into it. He really watched the action on stage. He smiled some, and even danced along with many of the musical numbers while on Née Née's lap. By and large, however, he just watched the production unfold with wide-open eyes and a wide-open mouth, wonderment written all over his face.

I'm sure anyone looking at me, looking at him, would have seen the same thing.

Royale with Cheese

Well we can all rest easy now...Kiernan likes cheese.

The big developement in Kiernan's life this week has to do with food. We've been wanting to graduate him to more finger foods for some time now. He's been doing quite well with baby food, but we both felt it was time we exposed him to more of the foods we eat. To that end, this past weekend, Wendy gave him his first egg.

Egg yolk actually. His doctor said we could start him with egg yolk (cooked, of course), and if he took to that without any troubles we could try him on some scrambled eggs in a couple weeks. Apparently you're supposed to introduce yolks only at first because there is more chance a child will have an allergic reaction to egg whites. The doctor suggested we try a hard-boiled egg first, but as we didn't have any hard-boiled eggs lying around the house, we went ahead and just fried up an egg instead. Then we cut the yolk into little bite-sized pieces and let Kiernan go to work on it. He played with it for awhile, smearing it around on his table and dropping it to the floor. What he ate of it, that first time, he really seemed to like. He's liked it more with each successive trial.

A word here about hard-boiled eggs, then. I mentioned above that the doctor suggested we give him a hard-boiled egg first, then I said we fried one up instead. Since that day we've given him eggs every day. Fried every time. Fried is just easier. Also, there is the fact that I have this little thing about hard-boiled eggs. I fear them. I should clarify. I actually like eating hard-boiled eggs quite a bit. I'm nuts for egg salad sandwiches, and I go crazy for a good deviled egg. So I guess I'm not so much afraid of hard-boiled eggs as I am afraid of cooking them. Me, the fella who is generally in charge of the family cooking and who for the last few years has been responsible for cooking the turkey for holiday meals, has an egg boiling phobia.

I really don't know why this is. Maybe it's just the mystery of the package that is the egg. It's so intimidating. With most other foods there is a way to tell whether that food is done. You can poke it, or prod it, or stick a thermometer in it. But it has always seemed to me that with an egg you're flying blind. If you haven't cooked it enough, and you open it, you can't shove it back in the shell and boil it some more. You're stuck with a soft-boiled egg. Not so bad in and of itself, but not what you were looking for going in, and certainly no good for a baby. If you cook it too much, it turns all green and nasty. Frying is so much easier because you can see the whole process right there.

I suppose I have to get over this now that my son is such a fan of eggs. He's growing. I'm growing.

In addition to eggs, this week Kiernan has had bits of lunch meat, bits of fresh cantaloupe, bits of watermelon, bits of bread (wheat bread), some banana, and some cheese. He also shared an apple with his mom (pictured). Almost without fail he has tried everything and liked it okay at first, then really liked it more the second time, then liked it even more after it had been retrieved from the floor. Somehow everything tastes better if it comes off the floor. The kid can totally finish with a meal, knocking your hand away to insist that he is done eating, then when he gets down from his seat he'll still eat everything in sight, food or not. String. Pieces of straw tracked in from outside. The cat. I mean, I know that tasting is just another way he is exploring his world, but does everything have to go in the mouth?

The answer is yes. I'm vacuuming much more these days in an effort to keep the straw I find in his diaper to a minimum. The ironic thing is I have to vacuum far less, in reality, because he's picking the floor clean so effectively.

Anyway, so far the food thing is going along nicely. Mealtimes have started to become more pleasant now that he is feeding himself, even if a lot of that includes playing with his food. When we were just spooning baby food into him he was still a good eater, but had to be entertained a incessantly. He'd grow bored with the meal and we would have to parade a variety of things past him to entertain him. Spoons for him to play with and tupperware containers for him to hide behind as we smuggled green beans into his mouth. Now that he's got all this food to occupy his hands he seems to be enjoying mealtime. Watching him sample and explore his world through food makes feeding more fun for us, as well.

Plus, as I said before, he likes cheese. This is a big deal around here. Many people were nervous about this as his mother is something of a picky eater, and does not like cheese. She makes an exception where pizza is concerned, but sadly you'll never see extra cheese as a topping in our house. Now that I've got another cheese eater in the house, however, all this is going to change. It's going to be a nonstop cheese fest, with cheese and fruit after dinner and cheese fondue at every meal. Sure, I'll weigh five hundred pounds, but at least I'll have cheese back in my life again in a meaningful and legally binding way.

I can't wait to see if he likes tomatoes, peppers and sour cream. I haven't been inside a decent Mexican restaurant in twelve years.

First this apple...then the world!

Saturday was Overalls Appreciation Day (husband wearing overalls not pictured, thank goodness) 

March of the Godparents

Sunday was a pretty good day for Kiernan. He got to see all three of his godparents, which always makes him happy. He's just crazy about the three of them, and really lights up when they come over.

It was also Movie Swap Day for Kiernan's parents. We don't get out to the movies much these days. This is our fault, and not for want of babysitting offers. In the months leading up to Kiernan's surgery, both of us were loathe to leave him with anybody else for any length of time. Even though his trusted and beloved godparents offered to look after him, as did his grandparents when they visited, Wendy and I were too freaked out to take them up on the offer. Especially after he had his spell--an episode related to his heart condition in which it seemed he was going to pass out. Until this happened we'd never really seen any external indication that there could be anything wrong with Kiernan's heart. He was the very picture of health. The spell was quite sobering, and it just seemed unfair to put someone else in the postion of looking after him. But the real reason was overprotectiveness and paranoia. The idea that he might have another spell, or a related emergency, with neither of us there to see him through it, was unimaginable.

Understandable to be sure, but still frustrating for those who'd offered to babysit and wanted to spend quality time with him, and frustrating for us as well.

Since his surgery we've been far too focused on his recovery to consider going on many dates, but the time is approaching when we'll need to make that a more regular thing. In the meantime, there's Movie Swap Day, in which we stagger our film viewing, one of us going out to see something early on and the other one going out later. There is an added bonus to this method of moviegoing: I get to dodge the chick-flick bullet. I just cannot overstate the value of this aspect of Movie Swap Day. There's nothing worse than finally getting to go out and being stuck watching The Wedding Planner.

So imagine my surprise when I asked Wendy what she was going to see this Sunday afternoon and she answered, "Serenity." She was going to see a spaceship movie! And she was going with her chick-flick buddy, Renee! At first I thought the two of them were trying to pull a fast one, that they were actually planning to sneak back to Renee's apartment to watch a compilation video of Matthew McConaughey's shirtless scenes. Or else Renee had found out about a Scottish Highland Games festival and the two of them were going to crash it to try to find the personification of Jamie--the hero of these Scottish romance/time-travel books they both read--and try to swipe his kilt. Turns out they did go to see the spaceship movie, and really liked it.

For my part I went to see a penguin movie. Yes, that's right. Given the opportunity to finally get out to the movies, I choose a documentary about penguins. I cannot explain this. I can, however, report that March of the Penguins is a fantastic film. I expected it to be. What I did not expect was that the film would make me feel so good about being a parent. Not that I've ever felt otherwise, but this film just filled me with a sense of pride and happiness about this new role of father. Kind of a cool byproduct.

At any rate, later in the day--but before the penguins--Kiernan's two godfathers, Darren and Daniel stopped by to see him. As if getting to see Renee--who in her alter ego "Nee Nee" is his godmother--wasn't enough! He was in seventh heaven, crawling all over them and showing them some of his new tricks. A great ending to the day.

Of course then I had to walk seventy miles to get food for him, but that's another story for another post.

Toothy Ten Month Old 

Mirror Mirror

Yesterday Kiernan turned ten months old. It has been three weeks since his heart surgery, so we took him to the pediatrician for his post-op checkup. (The doctor's visit described in the "Just a Staple" post was his follow-up with his cardiologist.) Aside from his weight being a bit low--it took awhile for his appetite to return after being in the hospital--he seems to be coming along swimmingly. The doctor was pleased to see him standing up and to hear that he is walking along holding on with only one of his hands. He was also pretty surprised to hear Kiernan say "Ma-ma" as we were preparing to leave the office.

This "Ma-ma" thing is tough to nail down though, or rather I should say the subject of his first word is tough to nail down. He's been saying variations of that word and of "da-da" for some time now, but because he just seems to say these things as part of his general babbling we haven't yet counted anything as his first word. Apparently he has to show some sort of discrimination or intent in order to get credit for saying all this stuff, which I think is kind of a drag. At some point he's gonna see the cool baby calendar Wendy keeps for him and he's gonna say, "Hey, wait a minute! You mean to say I've been talking all this time for nothing? What a waste."

So the visit went well, aside from the fact that we both cannot wait to find a different pediatrician (he's not a bad doctor, the fit just isn't right) we learned one valuable piece of information: we are raising quite a little narcissist. Given that neither his father nor his mother are people particularly concerned with their looks--ahem--I just don't understand how this could be happening. But it very clearly is.

Kiernan has been developing the ability to kiss over the last couple of months. This is another one of those things I never would have considered, going in, that you'd have to teach a kid. I mean higher level kissing, the way French people do, sure. I could see that as being something a person needs to learn, or at least develop as a skill. Thankfully, I won't be the one teaching Kiernan that; somebody his own age--hopefully--will be responsible for helping him muddle through that later on, say thirty years from now. But regular old kissing--kissing your mom goodnight or your European friends hello--is not innate as it turns out. I suppose that makes sense, I just never considered it.

So thanks to his mom he's learning to kiss. In point of fact, most of the stuff he's learned to do--the "eat" hand sign, clapping, waving--is thanks to his mom. She really is an excellent teacher, and even if her doctorate isn't officially in the kissing sciences, she's certainly done more than her fair share of field work. Her method in teaching the baby to kiss, then, has been to simply say the word, "Kiss!" every time she kisses him. That's it. (This is also, incidentally, the way she's taught me to become more organized. She just says, "List!" in the same bright and cheery tone as she leaves a sheet of honey-dos for me. It's helpful and, what can I say, a delight.)

The kissing thing is really pretty funny because while he got the basic concept quickly--basic concept being putting his mouth on somebody else's face, the logisitics are taking much longer--logistics being puckering his lips. Right now kissing for Kiernan is a very cute but strange open-mouthed affair. He just opens his mouth and plants it on your face in his slow and sweet baby way. We do have to teach him to pucker soon, though, because this slack-jawed thing is probably going to weird out any non-parents he tries it on.

At any rate, the examination table at his pediatrician's office is situated up against the wall, and there is a long narrow mirror--say a foot and a half high--mounted on the wall directly above it. While the doctor was making notes about the visit, Kiernan sat up on the table and noticed himself in the mirror. Seeing himself in the mirror generally makes him smile; it's also a good way to get him to forget why he is crying after he bumps his head. This time, however, he crawled across the table and planted a kiss on the mirror. And another. And another. It was hilarious. His doctor barely looked up from his notes, saying, "He's starting to figure out that it is him in the mirror; up until now he just saw it as a friendly face." So, great. My boy realizes the baby in the mirror is himself and he reacts by kissing himself over and over again. Good stuff.

Oh well, I suppose you have to learn to love yourself before you truly can love others.

Counterpoint

Kiernan started pointing at things on Sunday. Wendy was playing with him in the afternoon when he started pointing up at the aforementioned mylar balloons that have taken up residence on our ceiling. While I realize this is not exactly an earthshattering development, it is pretty cool to us. See, he's got a couple of tricks now. He claps fairly well. He waves (mainly goodbye) with some frequency. He has learned a hand-sign for "eat" which he has been doing for a few months. And now he points at stuff.

The reason I think this is so cool is that it is such a clear and specific gesture. There is no doubt that what he is doing is pointing. When he first learned to clap, it was this mainly silent activity that really served to highlight that he is right-handed. He would hold his left hand in place in front of himself, and bring his right hand to meet it in kind of a flailing motion. Then we tried teaching him to wave and clapping went away for awhile, like he only had one slot available for new hand gestures in his memory bank. Waving, too, has a sort of flailing quality about it. He's gotten much better as the weeks have gone by, but it's not very consistent and it's not always easy to get him to do it. Clapping, incidentally, has since returned and is much improved. For one thing, you can hear the noise of clapping when he does it. For another, the kid will do it at the drop of a hat. If a group is watching him he goes nuts clapping. It's his fall back trick. His specialty. Luckily the waving is there otherwise we'd have a real one-trick pony on our hands.

The pointing, then, is the first gesture he's done that is an absolutely perfect imitation of the way an adult would point. Index finger extended. Thumb and other fingers curled under in a fist. We can't get him to point upon request yet, but when he does point it's clear he wants something, and I just find this delightful. I love that he's really starting to be able to communicate to us beyond the tools he had early on, like crying and smiling. I'm not always clear what he's saying. I know when he points at the balloons, he wants the balloons, but when he points at the cabinet door, does he want a cabinet door or a Pilsner glass behind it? Or is he just expressing, as the cat does at every opportunity, that any closed door is simply unacceptable? I haven't cracked the code yet, but at least he is trying to communicate.

I love that. Hopefully I'll catch up soon.

Balloonolith

I thought I should follow up the "Just a Staple" post I just put up with one a bit more breezy, even if it is apropos of nothing.

Kiernan received an enormous balloon bouquet from two of Wendy's colleagues, Lisa and Pokey. The thing was just massive, stretching from floor to ceiling. Within a day I had to start dismantling it because we were nervous he would start using his new teeth on the lower balloons. So I clipped the ribbons and let the various balloons migrate upward. After a couple days the latex balloons dropped and I had to spirit them away and liberate them of their air--don't fret, it was all very humane--but the mylar balloons have remained on the ceiling.

There are three mylar balloons. Each one says "Get Well" in festive lettering and trails a short piece of ribbon. Kiernan loves them. I pull them down to him and he just goes, "Oooh! Oooh!" He grabs the ribbon, yanks it up and down, then releases it and watches the balloon make its way back to the ceiling. I've been using this game as a reflex exercise for myself, kind of the child monitoring version of "wax-on, wax-off." Kiernan releases the balloon and I try to snag the ribbon before the thing can rise out of reach. Keep in mind I'm spending most of my waking hours these days crawling around the floor while singing "The Count to Ten Song" (which is inexplicably set to the tune of "La Cucaracha").

"One-two-three-four-five,
Six-seven-eight-nine,
Join with me and count to ten.

One-two-three-four-five,
Six-seven-eight-nine,
Ten oh Yes oh Yes we can,
One-through-ten."

I need all the stimulation I can get.

Anyway, a weird thing happened. One of the mylar balloons has a little loop at the end of its ribbon. Since he likes playing with them so much, I looped this ribbon around one of his stuffed animals--a tiny red bird--so that he could play with the balloon to his heart's content. It sits there now, within reach. And is totally ignored. Kiernan will sit on the floor going, "Oooh! Oooh!" to the remaining two balloons on the ceiling until I bring them down to him, at which time he will immediately release them. But if I try to call his attention the balloon that is within constant reach, he couldn't care less.

I guess it really is less about the balloons than it is about the hunt. This leads me to all kinds of questions. Would a little girl react the same way? Actually...I think I'll stop this post now before I get into trouble.

Just a Staple

The appointment with Kiernan's cardiologist on Thursday went very well. His EKG was normal, his oxygen saturation was a good high number, and the doctor was very pleased with all that he heard in listening to Kiernan's heart and lungs. He was also happy with how active the little guy is, as Kiernan was standing up on the examination table when the doctor came in the room, flapping his arms and dancing in his inimitable way (Kiernan...not the doctor).

We really lucked out with this doctor, Kiernan's pediatric cardiologist, who, for the sake of brevity, I'll just refer to as "Dr. Ferry" as I proceed. He really is one of the best doctors I've ever been around. He is smart and confident without ever seeming condescending, giving us as parents due attention while making a point of establishing a rapport with our son (something our actual pediatrician doesn't seem able, or willing, to do). He never gives us the feeling that we are wasting his time, no matter how many questions we ask (regardless of how inane they are). And the best thing is that Kiernan really likes the guy. This is important because Dr. Ferry will be a part of his life for many years to come; even though his heart is repaired, Kiernan will still need regular checkups to determine that all remains well.

After each examination, Dr. Ferry asks us to meet with him in his office to discuss Kiernan's condition. This time he said how great Kiernan looked then threw the x-rays up on a little lightboard behind his desk. He pointed out Kiernan's heart, saying that it looked good, and that his lungs looked clear. When I asked about the weird random image in the side view x-ray, he put that x-ray up there immediatly and allayed my fears (it was a staple that was probably used to clamp off a bleeder, which is normal).

Another cool thing that happened was that the doctor told us we could stop the medications we've been giving Kiernan twice a day. Kiernan has generally been excellent about taking meds. He really is quite remarkable about it, opening his mouth when we have to give him a dropper of his daily vitamin, or Tylenol, or whatever. When the nurse who was prepping him for his surgery--before he was taken away from us--gave him an anti-anxiety medication he opened right up for it as polite as could be. "I wish my whole day would go like this," she said, delighted.

After the surgery, though, we were having to do it so much that he understandably started to balk. He was taking two meds each morning--one to make his heart stronger called Digoxyn, and a powerful diuretic called Lasix to ensure that no fluid was collecting in his lungs--as well as his daily multivitamin and whatever Tylenol he might need to get through the day and night. Poor guy was just sick of having to deal with it. So it's great that the doctor had us cut both out because he's looking so good. At first Dr. Ferry just told us to cut the heart medicine, but by the end of the appointment he just decided to cut the Lasix too. "I don't want him on these strong medications any longer than he has to be." Even though we were relieved, cutting out both medications like that did make Kiernan's mom and me a little nervous. We asked what we should be on the lookout for, warning-sign wise. Dr. Ferry rattled off a list of symptoms that would be of concern, capping off the list by saying, in his almost nonchalant way, "But none of that will happen. He's fine." He says stuff like that in such a way that it immediately puts us at ease. If I ever have another kid I'm considering naming him--or her--Dr. Ferry.

Not that we're considering having another kid, though. Gammy. Nana. I'm looking at you. Step off of the chair and sit back down, both of you. Seriously. Sheesh.

Anyway, we'll be seeing Dr. Ferry in another month or so, but just to be safe he's having us call him in two weeks to let him know how Kiernan is doing. As I write this on Saturday he is doing very well, though, and as a bonus from cutting out the meds his appetite seems to be returning. Which is great to see.

Too bad there's no medication to keep him from wanting to learn to walk for another few weeks.

Rainy Days and X-rays

Well, it almost rained. Seems a bit absurd to refer to what happened today in our part of Southern California as rain, given how this hurricane season is treating the southeast of the country, but I'll take what I can get.

And so will Kiernan's mom. Any weather change is welcome as it gives her a chance to try out some new piece of cute clothing. Today he got to experience a raincoat and a hood, which was a good thing since the next time it rains around here the coat probably won't fit him. Anything that has a number lower than 12 (as in, 12 months) on it he has grown out of, and that includes most things that are supposedly for 9-12 month olds. He's a big kid, exceedingly healthy, and except for the six inch scar running a vertical line down his chest, you'd never known that he just had a heart defect repaired.

Tuesday was Post-Op Day 12. Some highlights from the day include going to get a post-op x-ray that we will take to Kiernan's cardiologist for his appointment on Thursday, a sign language class in the living room, and what may have been Kiernan's first steps (although this is under dispute). The kid was getting close to walking before the surgery; I was certain that the surgery and the recovery period to follow would set him back a couple months. At least a few weeks. Boy was I ever wrong. We were discharged from the hospital on Post-Op Day 3, and by that evening Kiernan was back to pulling himself up to standing and cruising around the room by holding onto the furniture. Since that day he has only gotten stronger, more bold, and more insistent that he doesn't want help in moving around, all of which have combined to turn his parents into basket cases. His body just isn't ready yet for the kind of banging around that comes with learning to walk. They said at the hospital that as he healed he wouldn't do anything to hurt himself. Unfortunately, they didn't tell him that.

The x-ray thing went fine, incidentally. It was good for him to get out of the house for a bit. Kiernan is an extremely social baby, which he gets from his mom, and having to be cooped up in the house for all this time is beginning to make him stir crazy. As he heals we really can't take him in public much; his immune system just can't take contact with a lot of people yet. Not getting the chance to charm every person he passes in the grocery store is tough on the little guy, so even the few people at the x-ray place made a big difference.

We got to take the x-rays with us, too. As soon as we got home we held them up to the light and examined them, seeing at long last the wires the folks at the hospital told us were inside his chest, holding his sternum back together as the bones heal. These wires will always be there. In the x-ray they look kind of like the wire you get when you strip the paper off of those cheap twist-ties from the produce section of the grocery store. Five separate loops, each about the size of a dime in a row down his chest.

The other thing you can see in the x-ray is how his teeth are coming in, which is unexpected and kind of cool, or at least we thought it was cool until two this morning when he woke up screaming because so many of them are cutting through at the same time. Anyone who believes in Intelligent Design obviously never sat up all night with a baby who was teething.

Finally, in the side view of the x-ray is the only thing that causes me some measure of concern. As I said, you can see the wires holding his sternum together quite clearly in the shots. They show up in the midst of the shadowy image like glow sticks. For some reason, in the side view x-ray, you can see one distinct line, like a straight piece of wire maybe a couple of centimeters long, all by itself in the center of his chest. I'm sure there is a logical explanation for it, but for us laymen, looking at this picture of the inside of our son's body, it is disconcerting to see such an anomaly. I suppose we'll find out what it is at our appointment on Thursday.

In the meantime, it's back to chasing around this baby who is far too close to becoming a toddler.

The Creeping Kid

Ten days from now, my son Kiernan will be ten months old. It is high time I found a way to let his family and friends know about his day to day world. Hence…this.

I will post pictures and stories from the Adventures of Kiernan as often as possible, keeping you folks up to date while trying to fold in the goings on of the first ten months. In this way I hope to include you all in the life of my son in a more immediate way. I hate the phone (which explains the almost absurd infrequency of my phone calls); I have only sporadic time for e-mails (Kiernan has his own ideas of how a keyboard should be used); and, while I love writing them, I am woefully behind in my letter writing (I hid my good pens from the boy…and, as it turns out, from myself).

So, welcome. Hope you enjoy the ride as I (and my lovely wife) seek to raise our own little Calvin.