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.