Chair Enough

Wendy's folks were in town for her sister JoAnne's baby shower. Sadly Kiernan did not get any attention for the whole weekend.

Picass-Oh!

I may be the only one who finds this interesting and cool, but Kiernan can draw circles now. Circles. O's. Balls. Whatever. He can draw a circle.

He is motivated to do this because he got tired of getting us to draw baseballs and basketballs for him. Now he can draw them himself. Sort of. He draws a circle and makes some marks inside of it that are supposed to be the seams. Sometimes instead of a ball he will draw a picture of one of us. It looks like the same picture, unless he's making some kind of comment about my head. Recently the O's (circles, whatever) have become pictures of the sun. His sun pictures are really very good.

Also, no matter what anybody draws--including him--more often than not he will come along and draw a line coming off of it and declare that, henceforth, it is a balloon. You may think you just drew a cat. Nope. What you drew was a cat balloon.

Pumpkin Patch Family

A Monkey's Godfather

Kiernan and his godfather, Daniel. Darren--Kiernan's other godfather--was kind enough to loan him to us for the week so he could build both of our costumes.

Oh, and here's another shot of those cool, cool monkey feet:

And what the heck, one more shot of trick-or-treating. I love the way Kiernan looks carrying his little Jack-o-Lantern as he follows Sam to the next door.

The Curious Incident of the Monkey in the Nighttime

Here's a couple of pictures from Kiernan's second Halloween. As many of you may remember, Kiernan's godfather Daniel is a costume artist. He takes it upon himself to create Kiernan's Halloween costumes, which is really quite cool. This year he created a Curious George costume for Kiernan.


I am to blame for the almost universal poor quality of these pictures. I have no excuse, except to say that I may have been distracted by the enormous yellow hat I had been wearing all day. This is a cute shot, but I have not fixed the eyes yet. I think I took this one right before we went out trick-or-treating. I like this shot because it shows the very cool monkey feet that Daniel made for the costume.

As was the case last year, Kiernan's companion for trick-or-treating was his friend Sam. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Sam was a train for Halloween. From what I understand he is pretty much obsessed with trains, so he went as Thomas the Tank Engine and his mother, Heather, went as an engineer. Why some people feel the need to dress up as part of a theme with their child is beyond me...but whatever.

The boys were a great trick-or-treating team. It was funny to contrast this year with last year, because this time they would just march right up to the door, knock, and say "Trick or Treat!" Kiernan would also do the "smell my feet" chant at some of the houses. I should note that his mother taught him that. I'm very proud of both of them.


I've been trying to avoid this, but I suppose I should include a picture of all three of us.

In case it's not clear from the photo, I am the Man in the Yellow Hat from the Curious George books, and Wendy is a tree. She figured she would spend a significant part of the time while Kiernan was in costume holding him, so she decided to be Momma Tree. I have to say, she makes a darn cute tree. My costume is another of Daniel's brilliant creations. It is hard to get a toddler to carry around props that enhance his costume, so Daniel made a walking prop for him...me! This worked like a charm. We went to school that morning wearing our costumes and the kids just went nuts when they saw us.

Incidentally, I should note that if it seems that Kiernan is less than his normal, ebullient self in these pictures, that is because he was coming down with what would become a pretty good cold. At the time we just thought he was tired from what had been a very full day, even before trick-or-treating. So if he looks a little blank in these pictures, that's why.

This last picture is of Kiernan eating a tortilla after trick-or-treating. I'm including it just because I think he looks so adorable in that costume. I'm also including it because during our walk around the neighborhood we ran into a lot of other trick-0r-treaters. One pair of women stopped us in a driveway, laughed, pointed at Kiernan and said, "Curious Jorge!" They also pointed at me and said some things that I didn't quite catch since basically the word "Jorge" is the extent of my knowledge of Spanish. It's possible they said the word "queso" when they pointed to me, but I can't be sure.

I felt it was fitting to post a picture of our Curious Jorge eating a tortilla on Halloween. This is, after all, Southern California.

Blogga Culpa

First off...apologies. I've been bogged down with a couple of projects, and thus have been neglecting my blogging duties. Furthermore, I apologize but I won't be writing a whole lot for the next couple of entries. I just can't right now. I'll go into why another time, or when I talk to you individually.

Skirting the specifics of the issue for now, suffice to say I got some news yesterday that made me realize I really needed to post some pictures of Kiernan, at the very least. You all need to see more of Kiernan. He is amazing, just amazing, and I need to share that with you all more often. Life is precious and fleeting...and it moves so fast.

So...enjoy the pictures to come. I'll put in what commentary I can, provided I can get my mind to work through all of this and do so.

Love to you all.
Oh, and here's a picture of Kiernan wearing my shoes.

Basket Case

This was another of those moments when I had to leave Kiernan alone for a couple seconds. It was right after a diaper change, and I was disposing of the evidence. In those scant seconds, he took off across the room and climbed into the laundry basket.

I'm ready for my fabric softener, Mr. DeMille.

Book Smarts

After dinner things can get difficult. Especially if only one of us parents is at home. Cleaning up from dinner and getting Kiernan ready for bed is a dizzying process. He is so quick now; he can disappear in a moment. And he's too curious and good at climbing to let him get out of our sight for too long. I think he understands our trepidation in this regard, for often as soon as he does get out of sight, he goes silent, like a submarine. I wish there was some kind of parental sonar available for moments like that.

The other night I had to get the bath ready after dinner on a night when Wendy has to teach late. Kiernan had just been released from his seat at the dinner table and was ready to play. (The basic fact any parent of a toddler knows is that as the toddler gets more tired, he gets more active, more wound up. Meanwhile his parents are asleep on their feet.)

I sprinted into the bathroom to start the bath process, figuring I would do all the little tasks--rinsing out the tub, putting down fresh towels, getting a clean diaper and pajamas for afterward--in bursts. I'd run into the bathroom, get his bath toys out, then run back into the family room to make sure Kiernan had not climbed up onto the window sill. Then I'd dash back in, rinse the tub, and hurry back out to make sure he wasn't drawing on the walls. Every second Kiernan is out of my sight when we're alone is like the speed round on some game show. A huge digital timer pops up in my mind and wackily ominous music plays in my ears. I know I'd better get back out to him before that timer reaches thirty seconds or I'll be gonged out as a parent.

On this night, Kiernan made my job easy. He climbed up onto the reading chair and opened a book. He's been doing this more and more lately. Most of the time he still wants us to read to him, but time to time, especially when we are about another task, he will go and open a book and page through it himself. These are wonderful moments, so wonderful that they can become counterproductive. There are times I'm trying to do the dishes and he will just be sitting in his room, reading a book. All I want to do is watch him from outside the room, spy on his little moment of beautiful independence.

He's such a clever little guy. A budding intellectual, I'm sure of it.

Oh...I suppose I should mention what happened right after this picture. As I prepared to fill the tub, he followed me into the bathroom and tossed the book he had been reading into the tub.

Intellectual. Indeed.

The Picnic Lizard

A couple weeks ago we went to a local park for a picnic. We stopped at KFC after Kiernan's nap and picked up some stuff for lunch, then headed up to Chatsworth to the park. Wendy had just discovered the place the day before when she and Kiernan attended a birthday party for a friend of his.

Our first order of business, while Wendy unpacked and set up the food, was to throw the balls Kiernan had brought along up into the air over and over again. Much of our days are taken up with this activity. Whereas a few months ago we were predominately concerned with spraying water on everything in the world, these days we have to throw balls up into the air as high as we can. For hours on end. Kiernan is getting really good this, which I find interesting because it reminds me of one of the many games I came up with when I was growing up to amuse myself, particularly when we lived in Texas, and then later in Colorado. I was far removed from friends in both locales much of the time, so I came up with various single player games, including throwing footballs to myself.

Thing is, Kiernan does not view this game as a solo activity. If we try to sit down while he is throwing the balls up in the air, he stops, points at the grass, and says, "Daddy! Grass! Play!"

He's also getting very good at using the imperative.

After throwing the balls we ate our lunch. As we cleaned up our lunch, I noticed some movement on the blanket. It was a lizard. The little guy scurried up onto Kiernan's diaper bag and hung out for awhile. Then he took off and Kiernan followed him onto the grass until he lost him. A few minutes later the lizard returned and hung out with us for awhile longer.

Eventually he took off for good and we all went over to the play area. Wendy wanted to show me Kiernan's new skills on the slide. Up until this point I had only seen him go down the slide with help. Now he can do it himself. It's cool to see him do this at school now. He climbs the steps up into the little play structure, toddles over the slide, carefully sits down, and says "Ready. Set. Go!" And then he slides down. Often he is in cahoots with one of his classmates. One day it was a little girl named Bella. Another day it was a boy named Cameron (whose name Kiernan pronounces, "Cram-on"). He is just as insistent that his accomplice continue sliding with him as he is that we continue throwing balls in the air with him at home. Bella tried running off to find her twin sister at the swing, and Kiernan refused to continue playing without her. "Bella go? Bella go? Bella go?"

After sliding for awhile we packed up our stuff and went for a hike. Upon reentering the park, Kiernan saw another family having a picnic. More to the point, he saw their big blue soccer ball. He made a beeline for the ball, saying, over and over again, "Kiernan turn! Kiernan turn! Kiernan turn!" Wendy kicked into high gear, attempting to head him off at the pass. Luckily the little boy in the family was interested in sharing. He got up from his meal and brought the ball to Kiernan, letting him play with it. It was nice, especially since we'd had a rather ugly encounter with some other children before the hike. We played with the soccer ball for a bit before giving it back, at which time Kiernan practiced a few Spanish words with the family.

He's such a cool little boy.

Happy Chalk, Keep Chalkin' Happy Chalk

This is how Kiernan looks when his mommy gets home from work.

On this day we all ended up in the front of the house, chalking up the sidewalk. Cathryn and Keirnan had been playing Hopscotch, and after we walked her out to her car at the end of her day with him, Kiernan wanted to stay outside and draw improvements into the Hopscotch squares. Wendy drove up as we were doing this, and he went nuts, as he always does when she gets home.

She immediately joined us on the sidewalk and helped with the chalking project. A nice little bit of family time.

Pocket Rosies

I'm working in my office now. Kiernan's babysitter Cathryn just came out to let me know she had put him down for his nap and was heading out (she has class this afternoon). I said goodbye and thanked her. After she left I clicked on the monitor I have in my office that lets me hear what's going on in Kiernan's room.

Right now he is singing himself to sleep. He's singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" very softly.

Kiernan's ability to sing songs, actual songs that we know too, is a fairly recent development. For a long time he sang his own songs, just singing the colors he knows or singing the numbers he can count. Recently, however, he surprised us by beginning to string together the songs we sing to him. I think the first one I really picked up on was "Ring Around the Rosie", which was easy for me to pick up on because he turns around in circles while he sings it and falls down at the end. Not a lot of songs end like that. Especially if you're not in a mosh pit at the time. Kiernan's version of the song goes,

Ring a'rosies,
Pocket rosies,
All fall down.

That "pocket rosies" thing just knocks me out.

I see a lot of books right now that leave out the "ashes, ashes" when they print their version of the song. I just want all of you to know I have no intention of leaving out the "ashes, ashes" and sticking in some silly substitute that is kinder and gentler. I think one I've seen is "atishoo, atishoo". I'm not teaching Kiernan "atishoo, atishoo" because it is a silly word and we're not from England. I'm very particular about the words we use, even while singing about the Black Plague. (Incidentally, we're not.)

The next two songs Kiernan picked up were "Row Your Boat" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". The latter seems to be his favorite right now, maybe because he can do the hand signs that go along with it. It's great to hear him singing himself to sleep, both because it's just beautiful to hear my son singing to himself and because it is good for him to be able to get himself to sleep without our help. Still, I will miss sitting in his room and singing to him as he goes to sleep. When he is done drinking his milk, nowadays, he pulls his bottle from his mouth and says, "Crib." He often points to his crib to make it clear that it's time for bed. We put him in his crib, and then he says, "Sing! Chair!" This means he wants us to sing to him from the chair in the corner. He knows it will be harder for us to sneak out of the room if we're sitting down. This is due in large part to the fact that the floors in our house creak at the drop of a hat. Even a very light hat. They creak if you even just think about them creaking. There they go. I just heard them over the monitor as I typed that.

We sit down, then, and we sing while he gets his affairs in order, gathering and re-gathering all of his stuffed animals until everybody is configured just right and his blanket is in a twisted ball beneath him. If you stop singing during this, he will cease all activity, wait a moment, then say, "Sing!"

The night before last I put him down in his crib and he just smiled at me and rolled over onto his side. I said, "Goodnight. I love you." I made for the door, anticipating the order to sit down in the chair and sing. But he only smiled a sleepy smile at me and watched me leave. Then he sung himself to sleep.

It's funny how independence can be exciting and sad at the same time.

The Aunt from U.N.C.L.E.

During our trip to Virginia, Kiernan got some quality time in with an aunt and an uncle.


My brother Mason (Kiernan codename: MayMay) just graduated from high school in June. I was fortunate enough to be able to go out to Virginia and attend. Everybody seemed pretty happy to have me there, although it seemed that the first words with which I was greeted were often, "Where's Kiernan?"

This is, I'd have to say, as it should be.

Luckily I could tell people that Kiernan would indeed be visiting in August, thanks to the tireless efforts of his mother, Wendy. She had two weeks of work in West Virginia and worked it out so that Kiernan and I could spend one of those weeks with my parents. I say "worked it out" because she had to work around the fact that I was terrified of flying alone across the United States with Kiernan. I should say this anxiety is not out of any fear of flying, just of a general apprehensiveness about wrangling a rambunctious boy who is on the cusp of his ___ twos (no modifier before the word "twos" is in any way implied) inside a metal tube for five hours straight...on my own. So Wendy arranged the flights so she would fly with us into Norfolk, turn around the next day and fly to work in West Virginia, come back to Virginia at the end of the week, then turn around and fly back to West Virginia at the end of the weekend with us.

Yes, yes...I know how lucky I am.

At any rate, Kiernan hung out with Mason for the first part of the week, calling him, as I mentioned above, MayMay. We're constantly trying to help Kiernan refine his language, so I spent the days in Gloucester Point, where my dad lives, trying to get Kiernan to say "Mason" clearly. He got it pretty quickly, but to my surprise, Mason preferred the early version. I should not have been surprised. One of the weird sadnesses of Kiernan's unbelievable aptitude with language is the cute versions of words he leaves behind. I'll probably post about this seperately (and more comprehensively) at some point, but one quick example is "Bup." For awhile Kiernan would not say any word that began with a vowel without putting a consonant in front of it. So his Aunt Amy, for instance, was "Mamy". And a request for us to pick him up was, for a long time, "Bup! Bup!"

Wendy and I have this little look of mourning we share more and more when Kiernan leaves behind one of his baby versions of a word for the more accurate, grown-up version. Having seen the way my stepmom Sandi looked whenever someone mentioned Mason going away to college at the end of August, I realized that parenthood is one long road of these types of looks.

Incidentally, it looks as though Mason is holding Kiernan somewhat gingerly, as if he's not sure what to do with him. This is not because Mason is unsure of himself with kids--he's a professional babysitter, among other things. It is because Kiernan is soaking wet, a hallmark of him being outside for more than two minutes.

Actually, the two-minute rule is true when we're in California; he makes a beeline for the hose and his water bottles and goes to work. When we were in Virginia the two-minute rule for getting soaked was changed to the anytime-when-he-was-awake rule. I'm not saying it was humid there, but I couldn't tell the difference between when we were in the swimming pool and when we weren't.

Which was fine with Kiernan. Regardless of what the weather is doing, he wants to be outside.

Later in the week Kiernan got to see my sister, Hope (Kiernan codename: Hope). I absolutely love this picture, because Hope is reading to Kiernan and I just love that.

Kiernan and I--and later Wendy--stayed in the guest room at Mom's house. The guest room used to be Hope's bedroom, and before that it was mine. The bookcase in front of which Hope and Kiernan are sitting still holds a number of Hope's books. As I unpacked our things, Hope and Kiernan just ran around the room playing. Kiernan saw the books and started to pull them off the shelf, asking Hope to read to him. One that he pulled off was a story I had not thought about in years, but one which immediately stirred warm memories in me.

The book: The Monster at the End of this Book.

Hope read the book to him a couple of times, I think, and he was just nuts about it, as you can tell from the picture. He gets such joy out of books. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.

Shiny Humid People

At the end of our week in Virginia, the latter half of which we spent with my mom (Kiernan codename: Nana) and my stepdad John (Kiernan codename: Pop), Wendy flew in from West Virginia (where she was working) for the weekend. This was back in the era when you could still carry liquids on airplanes...those were the days.

Mom invited her sisters and some friends over for a cookout on Saturday. One family friend, Pat Dowd, shot the above picture of us. He's pretty good at photography, given that he is a professional cameraman, but I was surprised that he took this shot. Pat usually refuses to shoot pictures of anything that is not a teddy bear.

I particularly like the picture Pat took below. It's a great action shot of Kiernan that says just about all you need to know about what he's like right now. Always on the move. Always a blur. And almost always doing something with a ball.
It was a tough trip at times because there was a paucity of balls on the east coast. Apparently there is a correlation between number of balls in an area and availability of decent customer service. At any rate, Kiernan's Nana sensed this and brought this large purple ball home from the grocery store on our second day there.

Kiernan acknowledged it by thanking his Nana and promptly went outside to gather pine cones.

Shampoo Along the Mohawk

We're back home in California after a few weeks on the road. I'm pretty far behind in updating Kiernan's blog, because of that. I have every intention of catching up in the days to come. Really.

To that end I shall put up more pictures for the time being, and perhaps fewer words. I'll go through the pictures from the various trips we took, and post the ones I like with just a caption or a few thoughts, rather than the epic explanations I usually lay down. In this way, hopefully, I'll get you all up to speed on the goings on of Kiernan and his family more quickly. And you'll be able to read the blog without having to give up your job.

The picture above is from our visit to our family in Phoenix, Kiernan's Gammy and Grance.

It's been an up and down summer for us. Hope you have been well.

The Raspberry Conspiracy

Mealtime is always a challenge.


I've spoken before about Kiernan's tastes. What I did not know at the time was how rapidly they would develop. Indeed, what I could not have known was how much they would morph, not only over time...but from meal to meal. For awhile he refused steamed carrots, for example. Then one day--DING!--he gobbled them down. The next day...nope.

At his last checkup, his pediatrician assured me this was normal. I brought up concern about his appetite, and he basically said, "Don't worry. When he's hungry, he'll eat." Then he capped this off with, "If we all ate like toddlers, there'd be no obesity in America."

I was a little uncomfortable with the way he pointedly looked at my mid-section when he said this, but I tried to put that out of my mind.

Tonight was a good night for eating, though. He downed all of his mushroom turnovers (from Trader Joe's--best store on the planet). He ate a little bit of corn. Chewed on a bit of cucumber.

I wanted more vegetable action though, so I brought out a carrot. Kiernan has forsaken steamed carrots of late, so I just presented a raw, freshly peeled, carrot.

No interest.

So I started eating it.

Interest.

It was a great game. I'd take a few nibbles and he'd grab it from my mouth and take a couple of bites. Then I'd reclaim it and he would say, as he is recently wont to say..."Kiernan turn." We're trying to teach him the concepts of sharing and taking turns. So far he fully understands when it's "Kiernan's turn." It's a simple concept, though, since "Kiernan's turn" is apparently happening all the time.

We ate most of the carrot and moved on to dessert, which was, tonight, raspberries. He loves berries. Blueberries. Raspberries. Strawberries. His hand-sign for "berry" is perfect. It was, in fact, one of the first signs I remember him translating without any sort of cue. We could say, "Kiernan, what's the sign for 'berry'?" He would do it without hesitation. Or we'd do the sign, saying nothing out loud, and he would say his approximation of the word "berry." It's shocking how quickly he has learned the signs and words for the things he really wants.

The way he picked up the sign for "ice cream" leaps to mind.

I took to washing and cutting up the raspberries. At one point, I dropped one of them. It simply disappeared. I looked all over the floor. Under the cabinet ledge. In the cat's bowl. It was just gone. I even checked my earlobe, to no avail.

Then Kiernan smiled and pointed at the little drawer where we keep the scissors and twist-ties and rubber bands.

We had a huge laugh...then it was off to the bath.

Put Me Out, Coach

My son, the jock.
I apologize for the quality of the photo above (as with any of the pictures, you can click on the photo for a larger version), but the picture was taken on the sly without a flash. Kiernan had just gone down for his afternoon nap. I'm generally paranoid about waking him during his afternoon nap, especially during times like this when Wendy is out of town on business. She is in Alabama for a week and a half (!)--a statement that deserves an exclamation point for a variety of reasons--and while I have more help from friends and a fantastic babysitter during the week, the nap time during the weekend is very, very precious. But I just had to get this picture. I cracked the door to check on him, saw the above scene, and ran for the camera. I shut off the flash just to be safe, and snapped the picture as quickly as possible. Hence the poor lighting and general blurriness.

In case it's not clear what's going on in the picture, Kiernan is sleeping clutching his basketball under one arm, and his little football under the other.

A semi-recent development has been his tendency to cuddle up to his stuffed animals when he goes to sleep. This was not always so. He has never really had one special little animal or blanket, nothing we could dub his "woobie"...or whatever people call that special thing kids latch on to and drag around with them until they get sick and their parents toss it into a junk pile out back because they are afraid of germs and then a fairy comes and makes it real.

Um. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to go all velveteen on you. Blame Karen Hardcastle.

But lately he has been developing an affinity for certain of his animals. Most notably his Pink Panther, gifted to him by my Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim, a man so unbelievably laid back that as I kid I had no choice but to refer to him as the Pink Panther. Usually Kiernan's affection for his stuffed Pink Panther is expressed by chewing on said Pink Panther. Kiernan chews on many things, but he especially loves chewing on certain of his stuffed animals. Pink, also Fluffles (a little stuffed lamb), and Pooh (his Classic Pooh Bear, not the Disney version). Of late, when he falls asleep, he has taken to throwing an arm over any or all of these three and sleeping with them held close.

Today when I put him down for his nap, the basketball and football were already in the crib. I knew this was a mistake, but I caught it too late. He was fairly drowsy by this time, but still lucid enough to notice the basketball in his crib. I was concerned that seeing the ball would make him want to play with it, and that this would cause him to pull away from sleep. Still, I knew that if I tried to remove it, he would snap awake and complain (by which word I mean, "freak out"). So I left it in the crib with him. The football was down near his feet, so I was able to surreptitiously cover it with his blanket. I made for the door.

He opened his eyes a bit more and said, "One more. Sing."

"One more" is one of those little things that Kiernan has picked up, something we did not try to teach him but that he adopted on his own. It came about fairly simply. Whenever we were done with something, say a snack, we would tell him, "All done." He would give us the sign for "more," and we would say, "Okay...one more then. Okay? One more, then all done." And he would nod. One day he turned this on us. We were finished with something or other, say a snack, maybe a cookie. We told him he was all done. He held up a single finger and said, "One more."

Talk about being totally disarmed. How do you deny something like that? It is unbelievably adorable. He, of course, uses it for everything he wants to continue now. Like reading. When you finish a book he wants to read--current favorites are Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom--he will hold up his index finger and say, "One more." This indicates he wants to read that book again. The problem is that "one more" in this instance--indeed, in most instances--doesn't really mean "one more" in the spirit in which we used it originally. It means, "one more until you finish this readthrough and I hold up my finger and say 'one more' again." And again. And again. And again.

Yesterday he made me read Curious George and the Bunny to him eight times in a row. This is mind numbing, but who am I to object to my boy being crazy about his books? I want him to be crazy about his books. If this means my brain goes a little numb, so be it.

So he said, "one more, sing," which meant he wanted me to sing some more as he fell asleep. I went back to the chair in the corner and kept singing to him. At one point I fell asleep myself, and he helpfully woke me back up by saying, "one more, sing," again. I know I've mentioned this before in these pages, but I cannot for the life of my figure out how single parents do it.

As I feared, instead of getting sleepier, Kiernan began to get more restless. He rolled around with his basketball, trying to find a comfortable spot. He said, "Football...go?" He is forever asking where someone or something went by putting the word "go" after it. This week has been a cycle of "Mommy...go?" and "She went to Alabama to do a project with Lisa and Pokie." A never-ending cycle. Mommy-go? Mommy-go? Mommy-go? And after I answer "Mommy-go?" with the above about Lisa and Pokie--two of her colleagues--he will then ask "Pokie-go?" and "Lisa-go?" Even though he doesn't really know who these women are. Sometimes he mixes in "Dada-go?" because Darren and Daniel are out of town too. So I've got that going for me.

I avoided the subject of where the football was, to no avail. He eventually located it, holding it aloft with a clear air of victory. I gestured for him to lie back down. He did, and continued rolling around. Eventually the restlessness grew less and I got up to leave the room, singing a couple more verses before squeezing out of the door. He complained a bit, but much to my surprise fell asleep within a few minutes. Sometimes staying in the room to sing some more actually keeps sleep from coming. Maybe he feels falling asleep during a performance would be rude.

So I took a peek at him about fifteen minutes after the complaining stopped and there he was, cuddled up to his basketball and football.

What an incredible kid.

The New Zoo Review

Before I went to Virginia for my brother Mason's graduation from high school (I'll include a bit about that as soon as he sends me some pictures), Wendy and I took Kiernan to the Santa Barbara Zoological Gardens. We have been to our own zoo here in Los Angeles a number of times, but have heard from other parents that the zoo in Santa Barbara is really something to see, so we decided to make a road trip. I had labored under the impression that this trip was going to take upwards of three hours, for some reason, but when I looked up directions on Google Maps (Google Maps is the best, true that, double-true) I found that the drive was only going to take slightly more than an hour.

We got a semi-early start one Saturday morning, figuring that Kiernan would take his nap in the car on the way up, and that would afford us an uninterrupted time at the zoo. What ended up happening was that he did not fall asleep until we were ten minutes away from the zoo. In point of fact, his mother started falling asleep before he did. So, when we got to the zoo we just decided to let him sleep for another thirty minutes before starting our day. Really, this was just for him. For his well-being.

Keep in mind, the picture to the right is from the beginning of our zoo adventure.

About forty minutes after this picture was taken, Kiernan opened his eyes, stretched, and signaled he was ready for the zoo. Another half an hour and his mother did the same. We headed on in, finding that our membership card to the L.A. Zoo entitled us to half off admission. This was a minor disappointment as we had been told it would get us in for free. Still, only having to pay half is better than nothing.

It was immediately apparent that this zoo experience was going to be different than our experiences visiting the zoo in Los Angeles. This is a bit unfair to L.A. because the times we have gone there, the zoo has been undergoing massive renovations. Because of this it seems that you walk for miles without ever seeing an animal, instead seeing huge plywood barriers with signs that promise you someday will get to see an animal. Whenever I'm there I am constantly reminded of that scene in Jurassic Park when the scientists and kids are first sent out into the park and there is nary a dinosaur to be seen. Jeff Goldblum's character leans up to the in-car camera and says, "Now eventually you might have dinosaurs on your, on your dinosaur tour, right? Hello? Yes?"

The first thing that occurred to me as we made our way into the zoo in Santa Barbara was that this zoo felt more, well, alive, than almost any other zoo I have visited. It felt more intimate. The animals were closer, easier to see because of the layout of the park and the design of the exhibits. In addition to this, the animals all seemed to be out and about on this day. Maybe it was the nature of the day, slightly overcast and mildly warm. Or maybe it was just the nature of the climate in Santa Barbara, which is more moderate than here in Los Angeles. I mean, if I were a snow leopard living in the blast furnace heat of the San Fernando Valley, I'd probably spend all my time napping in the shade far away from prying eyes, too. The Santa Barbara zoo is right by the ocean, as well. We took a train ride around the park and could see the beach from the train.

[The picture to the left is from the train ride. I just love how Kiernan looks, sitting on his mother's lap, with his little legs propped up on the railing of the train car.]

One of the first places we went was into the Eeeww! House. The Eeeww! House holds the creepy crawlies. Spiders and snakes and scorpions. They are in wonderfully creative little habitat displays that you view through small little plexiglass covered openings. For instance, the display holding the black widow spider was a simple 'S' shaped pipe in a box that looked like the cabinet under the sink. Not our sink at home, mind you. Rather a family that doesn't have five hundred plastic bags and two hundred empty spaghetti sauce jars crammed into the cabinet under their sink. It was a simple, elegant little display; the black widow had built her web in one of the upper corners of the box, so you had to bend way down and crane your neck to see her.

It is suitably dark in the Eeeww! House, and at one point Wendy, who is no lover of spiders but does not mind the odd ball python, intimated that she was about to throw up because she was just too creeped out. She wandered away from the arachnoid displays and leaned down to peer into one with centipedes or Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches or something. She was looking into the little plexiglass window when all of a sudden a human hand appeared, reaching into the display from above. This, understandably, caused her to jump. I had a similar experience later when viewing a scorpion and an unseen worker started spraying a mist of water into the scorpion's little home. A very cool, very creepy place.

One of the highlights of the visit was the lion exhibit. We first saw the lions during our aforementioned trip on the train, the male perched on one enormous boulder and the female on another, both looking majestic and unconcerned. We saw them again when we were walking the park, at which time they were more active. In fact, the lioness was at the far end of the enclosure, staring down a blue ball. Here we are, yards away from two of nature's most incredibly beautiful creatures, and what does Kiernan immediately yell?

"Ball!"

He pointed at the big blue ball the lioness was staring at, then he said, "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease!" Now don't get me wrong. I'm happy we're teaching him to talk. I'm very happy with how quickly he is picking up and using words. But "please" is not always one of the words I'm happy about teaching him. Because he doesn't just say the word, and he doesn't just say it in the right circumstances. He also has figured out how to maximize the power of the word both by drawing it out for what seems like thirty seconds, and by pairing it with an expression of such pitiful pleading that you can refuse him nothing. It feels like not giving him a fourth cookie is tantamount to denying him water after he's been in the desert for six weeks.

The lioness, thankfully, was impervious to both his tone and his expression. She was not about to share her blue ball with him. To drive this point home, at the exact moment he asked for the blue ball she began playing with it. This was a wonderful moment. She looked like our cat Cali when she is playful. She grabbed the ball in her jaws and shook it around. She threw it and then chased it. Then she rolled over on her back and held it in her paws, wrestling it. It was like somebody at the park was controlling her with a remote control.

All in all it was a terrific day. For the first time Kiernan really seemed to get into the animals. During our other visits to the zoo he has been more interested in people watching than animal watching. Even when he and I went to the L.A. zoo with his godfathers, he was more interested in running around after other kids and entertaining Darren and Daniel than he was in looking at the displays. I do not mean that comment to sound negative, however. I'm enjoying all these stages. It is fun to go to a place like the zoo and see how he reacts differently each time. Each experience is something new, for him and for us. That may be the best part about being his parents, seeing these discoveries as they happen.

That's the main reason we keep taking him to places like the Cold Stone ice cream shop. It's not because we want ice cream, but rather because we want to see how he reacts to the experience each time. It's important to take note of such things. For his development and well-being. Of course.

I Scream, You Scream.

A couple weeks ago, Kiernan had a visit from his Granddaddy Jake and his Omi, pictured above. Jake is Wendy's father, and Omi--otherwise known as Karen--is Wendy's stepmom. The two of them live in Colorado and had flown out to spend some time with us and to see our brother-in-law Mitch play a show in San Diego with his band, Ape. Or maybe Mitch was playing in a band with an ape. Or as an ape. I don't know. There was some combination of Mitch, a guitar, and a simian...I do know that.

Before the concert Jake and Karen drove up from San Diego to spend a couple of days with us. They arrived around lunchtime, and we showed what a class establishment we are running by promptly taking them to Subway for lunch. Furthermore, we made them walk to the place, and let them pay. What can I say, that's how we roll.

After lunch we got to spend about seventeen hours in TJMaxxxxxxxx, a Ross-like store in the same shopping center as Subway, looking at geegaws and other assorted bits of junk. Karen was excited that TJ Maxx was right there, and while Wendy absolutely hates to shop, she felt it would be poor hospitality to deny Karen the chance to find the perfect watch that she could return the next day. There was a weird sort of payola aspect to this shopping stint, however. Karen picked out a pair of earrings that somehow wound up in Wendy's jewelry drawer because Karen supposedly didn't really like them that much once she got them home. Also, Kiernan got a new ball to play with. It gave me the feeling that strange things were going on behind my back, but at the end of the day, it is the grandparents' perogative to spoil the grandkid. Besides, what's the big deal about one new little ball, I told myself.

Foolish, foolish man.

Located next to TJ Maxx is a drug store. I think it is a Rite Aid. We went in there next, as the grandparents needed some superglue or something, while Granddaddy Jake spent two or three hours in line waiting to pay for the merchandise back at TJ Maxx. Kiernan and I wandered the aisles for a little bit until he caught sight of a rack of balls, one of those huge steel cages that sits at the end of the aisle and is just crammed full of balls of all sizes and colors. His eyes lit up like, well, like Karen and Wendy's did moments before at the TJ Maxx jewelry counter. Kiernan and I stood there playing with those balls for what seemed like twenty minutes. He would take the a ball out of the feeder hole that was right at his level, and toss it on the floor of the store. I would grab it before it could get away and toss it back up into the steel cage. It felt like fielding practice, if fielding practice were done with huge bouncing pink baseballs.

Finally Wendy announced that we were ready to get going. We went to the front of the store to meet the others. This particular Rite Aid has a counter for ice cream at the front. Wendy and Karen stood over by this counter, speaking in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Before I knew it they had bought Kiernan an ice cream cone. We're not much for giving Kiernan sweets, but again the fact of the grandparents getting to spoil the grandkids overrode my concerns. Besides, as I said in an earlier post, Kiernan's association with the letter "I" is the term "ice cream". He does not say the words when he sees the letter "I", rather he gives the hand sign for "ice cream", which is basically licking his index finger.

Fast forward to the next morning.

Karen has decided to return the watch she bought the day before. The earrings should have been returned as well, but they somehow found their way into Wendy's jewelry collection, as previously mentioned. Wendy had some work to do for school, so I walked over to TJ Maxx with Granddaddy Jake and Omi and Kiernan. After returning the watch, we went back into Rite Aid because Jake needed some more superglue or a new satellite dish or something. We walked into the drug store behind Jake and Karen. As we crossed the threshold into the store, Kiernan gave the hand sign for ice cream.

Now, Kiernan and I have been in this drug store many, many times. We have bought all kinds of things there. Juice. Baby food. Diapers. Wipes. It took one ice cream cone to get him to associate the store with ice cream. One. Eat your heart out, Pavlov.

While Jake and Karen went about looking for their whatnots, Kiernan and I proceeded to the middle of the store to play with the balls for a few minutes. We got the call that it was time to go, and emerged from the aisle to find Omi standing before the ice cream counter, holding an ice cream cone. "Is this okay," she asked, after Kiernan had already seen the cone. I looked at my watch. It was around 10:00...AM!

I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to that drug store again.

On the bright side, at least I won't be blamed for getting my son hooked on ice cream before he was two. Being addicted to ice cream is his birthright as a Murawski. Legend has it that my dad fed me ice cream to assuage my anger while I was teething. I point to this as an excuse for why no carton of ice cream, no matter what size, stays in our freezer for more than two days. Because of the actions of Omi and Granddaddy Jake, Kiernan won't be able to similarly blame me. So I can eat as much New York Super Fudge Chunk in front of him as I want to, guilt free.

All hail grandparents, and their inherent right to spoil grandkids. Who knew it would benefit me?

Oh-Mi...Oh-My.

Kiernan is a fortunate little kid. Not only is he blessed with the three best godparents in the world, he also has four sets of grandparents. Each grandparent goes by a different name. I have mentioned this before. Even given that there are eight of them, he has managed to master most of their names. Some of them came easy. My mother, his Na-Na, for instance, who will object to my use of an adjective in the previous sentence when an adverb was called for. She'll also object to the preposition at the end of that last sentence, incidentally. And my father, his Pap-pap. My stepdad, Pop, as well. Those were easier for him to say, I guess. Plus I spend a lot of time showing him their pictures and saying their names.

Ironically enough, the grandparent with whom he is most familiar, his Gammy--Wendy's mom--has the name that has given him the most trouble. I can't figure it out, either. It's not the "G" sound. Wendy's stepfather, Rance, goes by the grandfather moniker "Grance" (thanks to me). Kiernan started saying "Grance" very early on, whenever he would see a picture of Grance. Until recently he could not say Gammy, though he's seen her many times and is, obviously, crazy about her. Now he says a version of her name...it sounds sort of like, "May-May." Weird that he can manage "Grance", or even a rendition of the word "green", but cannot get "Gammy".

As I talk of in the next post, Wendy's father Jake and her stepmother Karen visited a couple of weeks ago. Jake's grandfather moniker is Granddaddy Jake. That is a mouthful for a toddler. Luckily Karen counters this with a short and sweet grandparent nickname: Omi. However, while "Omi" is short, I expected him to have a hard time with it. Well, needless to say, he adapted.

For Granddaddy Jake, what Kiernan did was come up with a hand sign. I have mentioned many times about how we are teaching Kiernan to sign. Only a couple of people have hand signs so far, most notably his godfathers, Darren and Daniel. We came up with those because before Kiernan could say "Daddy," he would say "Da-da." When referring to his godfathers he would say "Da-da" too because their names both begin with the same sound. So Wendy created hand signs for them. Daniel is a costume designer, so she taught Kiernan to grab the front of his shirt and shake it about when he meant Daniel. Darren is a makeup artist, so Kiernan pats his hand against his face to indicate Darren. His other godparent, Nee-Nee, needs no hand sign since nobody else's name begins with Nee-Nee, but when he's got a bottle in his mouth he touches his knee to indicate Nee-Nee. They are always spoken of as a triumvirate, especially at bedtime, when we sing to him. It's kind of like he's doing that "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" gesture when he speaks of them.

In point of fact, many of you reading this are part of various triumvirates. This is mainly because that works into the rhythm of many of the sleepy time songs we sing to him. No matter what song we sing to him at bedtime, he wants us to work your names into it. There is the obvious song, adapted from school, "Good Night Kiernan" that we will use as an example.

Good night Kiernan.
Good night Kiernan.
Good night Kiernan,
It's time to say good night.

At school the teachers sing "Hello Kiernan" and "Goodbye Kiernan" (of course substituting each kid's name in, when it is their turn). At night we sing the version above. We get through one verse and Kiernan pulls his bottle of milk out of his mouth and says a name. Then we have to work that name into the song. As soon as we say the name he wants, he moves on to the next name in the group. So the song above goes, for instance:

Good night Pap-Pap,
Good night Uncle Mason,
Good night Sandi,
It's time to say good night.

Or,

Good night Ramon,
Good night Sherry,
Good night Jonathan,
It's time to say good night.

[Ramon is our next-door neighbor, here and forever known as the Best Neighbor in the World. Sherry is his girlfriend (also our friend), and Jonathan is his teenaged son (also our friend). Ramon is moving to another neighborhood this week...so we are in a state of mourning. I've never, ever, had a neighbor like this. Oh, and Kiernan is bonkers over him as well. Note to Rance: Today Ramon gave Kiernan the little golf club with which he taught Jonathan how to swing. I cannot express how much we are going to miss this man.]

Moving on. Whether the song is the song above, or "Rockabye Baby", we still are required to work your names in. This gets weird with songs like "Rockabye Baby" or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". I mean, not every song lends itself to working a person's name into the lyrics. What am I supposed to sing? "Gammy, Gammy, Gammy your boat, gently down the stream"? Kiernan does not care about this. He wants to hear your names when he is going to sleep. Period. The process is somewhat taxing on us, the singers, since his versions of some of the names he says are not all that clear. And he's adding new names to his repertoire all the time. He will repeat a name over and over and over again until we figure out who the heck he's talking about, as well. Only then will he move on to the next name.

Back to hand signs, then. Kiernan does not say the whole name "Granddaddy Jake" yet. He can say "Jake" pretty well, but we really want him to say the whole thing. He cannot, so he and Jake collaborated on a hand sign. The sign is basically sticking his index finger in the air, pointing straight up. Kiernan went through a phase of pointing at everything. Two people really reacted to this, Jake, and Kiernan's Aunt JoAnne. JoAnne would point whenever Kiernan pointed and he found that hilarious. Jake would just point straight up. So that became his sign. Whenever Granddaddy Jake's name is mentioned, Kiernan immediately points to the sky.

Omi is another matter. He says her name, but he says it as two distinct words. "Oh" and "Me". It is so funny. Like a record skipping or something. "Oh-Me...Oh-Me." Imagine a hiccup between the words "Oh" and "Me" when you say it in your head, to get the idea. He loves to say that name. And when Omi and Jake were here, Kiernan spent the entire time following her around the house and saying, "Oh-Me...Oh-Me." And pointing at the sky.

I guess you could say they bonded.

The Turnover Artist Revisited

Here's Kiernan and his mom sitting down to a little snack during mid-morning play time. Wendy got back from a business trip late last night, and he is obviously delighted to have her back. [Note that in the background of the picture you can make out Kiernan's newish sand boat, and the infamous rocking fish.]

Moments before this, the three of us were hanging out on the back steps. Kiernan had just finished a round of watering, so he climbed up to the top step and sat down. He picked up the empty package from a set of Giant Magnetic Letters that I had not yet taken to the trash can. The little cardboard insert that tells what the toy is fell out, and he grabbed it and started pointing out colors and letters.

The key word he focused on was the main word on the insert: "lowercase". He pointed out the W, saying, as usual, "William!" Or at least his version of the name. William is his two-year old friend who lives down at the other end of the street.

Kiernan then flipped the cardboard insert over, gave a surprised little yelp, and pointed at the W again. Only now, upside down, it was of course an M. He said, "Mama," as he is wont to do when he sees an M. Then he flipped it over again, gave another surprised yelp, and said, "William!"

This went on for some time. Flipping the insert. Yelping in surprise. Calling out the letter/name. That's really all this post is about. It was a little slice-of-life moment that struck me. So I thought I'd share it with you.

Oh...and man it's good to have Wendy back home.

Gods and Monsters...and Balloons

On Easter Sunday, Wendy, Kiernan, and I met our friends Darren, Daniel, and Renee, for dinner at an Italian restaurant. Darren is to the left of Kiernan in the picture above, and Daniel is to the right of him. As I have mentioned before, Darren, Daniel, and Renee are Kiernan's godparents. In addition to being our close friends, they are our family.

The Italian restaurant in question was the Macaroni Grill. One of the useful things about this restaurant is that its tables are covered with butcher paper. Crayons are provided with impunity, and your waiter even writes his name on the paper covering your table. So, a toddler that is just learning the joys of the drawing feels right at home. Darren, an accomplished artist in his own right--I'll post a picture of the mural that is Kiernan's bedroom at some point--was only too happy to take up the seat next to Kiernan's high chair and collaborate with him on some drawings. Daniel, not wanting me to feel left out, sat next to me and tried to teach me how to draw a Smurf. It was great Smurf, I have to say that. But I can only draw three things: spaceships, unicorns, and pigeons. That's it. And two of those things have been mistaken for a monkey dancing with a coconut. Kudos to Daniel for trying, though.

Renee sat directly across from Kiernan, and as soon as he saw her, he immediately yelled out her name, "Nee-Nee!" He then shook his head vociferously from side to side, growling as he did so. Renee gave the table a sheepish look, then muttered something to Kiernan about this not being an activity that was meant to be performed in public. He did not acknowledge this, so she responded to his head shake and growl in kind.

This head-shake-and-growl thing that Renee and Kiernan do is called "The Monster"...or something. I'm not sure what it's called. I do know that the word "monster" often prefaces it being done. I also know that Renee started doing it with Kiernan during one of her babysitting stints with him. I also know that he loves doing it with her. It is specific to her, specific to the two of them. I also, furthermore, know that Renee never intended this head-shake-and-growl-Monster thing to be something that she did in public. Unfortunately for her, like the rest of us, she cannot resist him.

Dinner went well. Although things got a bit dicey at dessert. The other time we took Kiernan to Macaroni Grill, he got strawberries and cream as his dessert with his kids' meal. He was nuts about that. Sadly, this time, no berries were available. So the waiter brought him ice cream. He was uninterested at first. This was unnerving. Unacceptable. Addiction to ice cream is a Murawski hallmark. But Wendy, bless her heart, persevered, and he eventually got the hang of eating ice cream. He was not crazy about it, but he did seem to like it.

Any doubt that he would continue to be interested in ice cream would be abolished during his grandparents' visit a couple weeks later...but that's a different post.

After dinner, Darren and Daniel asked us to go with them to their van so that they could present Kiernan with his Easter gift. Renee had dropped off a basket for Kiernan before Easter, and the Easter Bunny had hidden his other basket that morning, so he was pretty excited to get another gift this late in the game. We all went to their van and they unveiled the gift...balloons.

I cannot overstate how huge a gift this was. Kiernan goes absolutely nuts over balloons. Nuts. I can barely get through the grocery store without a meltdown because of this. Those of you without kids, next time you're in a grocery store, take a moment to inventory the balloons. They are everywhere. Especially in produce. It's almost impossible to get out of produce these days without an international incident. Suffice to say, we never leave a grocery store without Kiernan getting a free balloon from the staff. He's that good.

But those free grocery store balloons are crap. Even the ones from Trader Joe's. They are the latex balloons that lose their helium in a day. The balloons Kiernan's godfathers gave him were mylar balloons. Mylar balloons rock. Easter was April 16. The last of the Easter balloons finally descended to the floor today, May 11th. In the interim, those balloons provided an unbelievable amount of fun.

It should be noted that the chocolate the Easter Bunny dropped off for Kiernan's parents did not last as long as the balloons. And no matter how much of a fuss I make, the cashier at the grocery store never gives me a bit of chocolate for free.

Man, toddlers don't know how good they have it.

Good Enough for Me

This morning I was wearing my Donald Duck shirt. It says, "DONALD" across the chest in capital letters. Donald is in the center of the shirt, and underneath him is printed, "Still angry after all these years."

As I said in the second "Brought to you by the letter 'K'" post, whenever Kiernan sees letters, he yells them out to identify them. He immediately started talking about the letters D on my shirt, as well as the A and the N. When he points out a D, I say, "Yes, right. What does it stand for?" He says, "Da-da." Then he gives the hand sign for Daniel, and I say, "Daniel." Then he gives the hand sign for Darren, and I say, "Darren." He nods after every one of my correct answers, reminding me just who in this relationship is really being trained. He does not know hand signs for everybody, but we created signs for his two godfathers because he says their names, and Da-Da, in almost exactly the same way.

This morning I went through all three "Da" names and we went about playing. He pointed out the letter D on my chest again a few minutes later and I said, "Da-Da." He nodded. We'd been singing and dancing all morning, so I just sang out, "D is for Daddy, that's good enough for me," to the tune of Cookie Monster's seminal, "C is for Cookie."

Kiernan looked at me and very clearly said, "Cookie. Cookie."

Oops. It's never a good idea to bring up cookies before you have fed the toddler breakfast. But he had never linked the two before, and I hum the tune all the time. So, I went into distraction mode. Luckily, that worked.

I'm going to have to be very careful when I play that Sesame Street playlist for him on my iPod, from now on.

Brought to you by the letter 'K'...Part Two

One of the first things Wendy did once Kiernan got into drawing was to start teaching him the letter K. He took to recognizing it right away, much to my amazement. We would be drawing with him, sitting at his little table, and we'd write the letter on his paper and he would proclaim, "K!" Eventually he started to point at himself when he identified the letter, because we were diligent in linking the letter to him, to his name.

After acquiring sidewalk chalk, he expanded his drawing to the cement of our driveway and patio. We began to expand the letters we were teaching him, linking each letter to a person he knows, or a couple of people he knows. After K, the next two letters were, obviously, D and M. D was an easy one for him to pick up, because three important people in his life have names that begin with that letter. His two godfathers--Darren and Daniel--and, of course, me. He picked up M in short order as well because somebody around here apparently goes by something that starts with M. Not sure who. Oh well, I'm sure it'll come to me.

Next letter was N, for his godmother Nee-Nee, and for my mom, who goes by Na-Na. Letters that are linked with the names of his other grandparents came after that. Then came C, because his babysitter's name is Cathryn.

At one point, early on in this process, Cathryn was playing with Kiernan. They were out on the patio, drawing on the cement with chalk. When out in the yard, Kiernan has a couple of activities that are basically his standbys now that the pots of dirt he used to play with are gone. He used to transfer dirt from one pot to another, and from the pots to his hair for hours. The conglomeration of pots was, at one time, a sort of feeble attempt at an herb garden on my part. Apparently if you want an herb garden to succeed you have to water the herbs in question. Who knew? After we got him a sand box--sand boat, actually--Wendy tossed all the dirt and refilled the pots with sand. This is better in that he gets less dirt in his hair and eyes and pants, but not so good in that he's getting fewer minerals in his diet.

Anyway, other activities have taken the place of his work with dirt. If he is not drawing with chalk, he is either blowing bubbles or carrying around one of his squirt bottles and spraying every surface in sight with water. I have a squirt bottle hanging off of the grille that I use for controlling flare-ups when I'm cooking. Actually, I should say I had a water bottle hanging off the grille. Kiernan absconded with it and made it his own. He loves to squirt water at people, of course, but his primary work involves, as I mentioned, just squirting things. All kinds of things. Chalk letters drawn on the ground. Chalk creatures drawn on the ground. The patio furniture. Every plant in sight. The bowls we use to feed the outdoor cats. The car tires. He carries the bottle in one hand, and works the spray trigger with the other hand, like he's playing an accordian or trying to make raspberry noises with his underarm. It is incredible how intent he gets on his task of getting everything wet. He takes his work very seriously.

He gets pretty intent about drawing with the chalk, too. What he generally does is go around with a couple pieces of sidewalk chalk, making marks on the ground. What I thought were indiscriminate marks. Often he calls out letters he wants me to draw. Or, if I am just writing down words and names on my own, he identifies the letters and calls out the names of the people he has come to link them with. Sometimes I'll draw sad approximations of animals and spaceships. For instance, outside my office is a picture of a space ship beaming up a unicorn. At least that's what it is to me. Others have said they thought it was a monkey dancing with a coconut. I've never been very good at drawing. However, I have learned to draw the pigeon from Mo Willems' excellent book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, but, as alluded to in a previous post, that book deserves its own post.

When I draw something, or write a letter, Kiernan comes after me and marks where I have marked. He generally makes three little marks of his own.

On the day I mentioned above, the day he was out chalking up the world with Cathryn, I stepped out of my office to watch what they were up to for a few moments. He was going over something she had written, putting down his three little marks.

She turned to me and said, "I think he's trying to write the letter 'K'."

I was stunned. And pretty excited. I'm still not positive that she is right about this, but I'm pretty sure she is. It was a clever observation on her part. The more I watch him making his little marks, the more I'm convinced she is correct.

He can now identify most of the letters of the alphabet. I'm not sure what he thinks of this, or what he thinks they are. Some of them he cannot even really say, instead saying the name of the person or thing we have linked the letter to. H, for instance, is linked to his friend's mother, Heather. When he sees that letter he tries to say her name, and it comes out "Heya." [Note to my sister: we are trying to teach him your name too, he just cannot say Hope yet. But don't worry. And go easy on the kid. You still can't say the word "brother", for goodness sake. :)] He can't say the letter I, either, but he uses a hand sign Wendy taught him to convey that he identifies it. The hand sign she taught him is the sign for "ice cream". I knew I was smart to marry that girl.

When we are out in public nowadays, and Kiernan sees a letter featured prominently on a sign, he calls it out. He is still most enthusiastic about the letter K. One morning we were in a McDonalds (not our normal hangout, don't worry...I just had to take the car to the garage for service and that was a convenient place to meet). Wendy sat Kiernan down in his chair and he pointed and yelled out, "K!!!!" Wendy looked but did not see the letter K anywhere. He pointed again and proclaimed, "K!!!!" She looked again. The place was undergoing renovations, and one of the doors to the back area had yellow caution tape over it. The tape was basically in the form of a giant letter K.

I have to say, it's great fun teaching him all this stuff. It's also amazing to me the amount of things we have yet to teach him. Every day it gets a little clearer why people refer to toddlers as little sponges. He is just absorbing so much, at such an incredible rate.

I guess the only truly sad part of this is that I've had to give up cursing in the car when other drivers do something moronic, which, in Los Angeles, is every 2.73 seconds. I don't like to curse at other drivers, but it's the law here in California, so I comply. Not any longer though. Kiernan is just at that stage where he can pick up almost anything you say and send an approximation of it right back at you. I found this out when my friend Yuri called me on my cell one day. I answered the phone, "Yo! Yo! Yo!" From the backseat I immediately heard, "Yo! Yo! Yo!" So, no more cursing in the car. It hurts, giving that up, because it was one of those things Wendy really loved about me. I know she looks forward to the day he goes away to college, so that I can take that up again.

In the meantime, good thing I'm learning sign language.

Momma's Greatest Hits

Kiernan's Mom, Wendy, is out of town this week on business. She left before sunrise this morning for a consulting gig in West Virginia.

The normal Tuesday routine dictates that Kiernan and I go to school--his infant/toddler program--in the morning. Before that we usually go to breakfast together. After that he naps and then we have our usual day. The normal routine on a day when Wendy leaves on a business trip involves much more clinginess on Kiernan's part. Maybe on my part too. You'll have to wait until he can type to find out about that. At any rate, today was no exception. Even though she took a shuttle bus to the airport, and therefore he should not have been aware that she was out of town...somehow he knew. He always knows. He's like Cali--our cat--on the day I have to take her to the vet for her vaccinations. It's like he's privy to some toddler (or, in Cali's case, feline) newsletter that prints parental itineraries.

Anyway, he was much more high maintenance today. He was still great, just more demanding.

After our reading time, we give Kiernan his bottle and sing him to near-sleep. As he gets drowsy we put him in his crib, sing to him some more, and he falls asleep (I'm knocking on the wood panelling of my office as I type this). Tonight I read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which merits its own post, so I won't comment on it here. We finished the book, the timer for the bottle warmer beeped as if on cue, and Kiernan, in his adorable Pavlovian way, gave me the hand sign for milk. We said "night-night" to every light in the house and I gave him his bottle.

Halfway through his bottle he gave me the "more" sign. We have come to recognize this instance of the "more" sign as meaning he wants us to sing to him. So I started singing my standard bed time songs: "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club, and "When September Ends" by Green Day. Often these work out just fine. You'd be surprised what works. The music only, hummed version of "C is for Cookie" by Cookie Monster is great for naps, for instance. You'd think it would make him think of cookies, and then think about how stupid napping is when there are so many cookies to be eaten, but that's not the case.

Tonight my usual repertoire was no good. He was having none of it. He made this known by doing his version of the request.

As I sang, he took his bottle out of his mouth and started to do the "Go-Go-Go" chant. I knew he didn't want to hear the "Go-Go-Go" song. But I also knew that most of his mother's good night songs had the word "Go" in them. So I switched to one of her songs. He immediately calmed down and shut his eyes.

After a couple passes through that song, he opened his eyes and said, very clearly, "Baby". I know Wendy sometimes sings "Rockabye Baby" to him, so I switched to that, even though I find that song disturbing. Whenever I sing that song I find myself thinking of David Lynch and wondering whether he sings the song to his kids. Kiernan again closed his eyes and relaxed.

A few minutes later he opened his eyes again and did the "Go-Go-Go" hand motions, albeit much more sleepily. So I went to one I've heard Wendy use in dire circumstances, "Goodnight Sweetheart", which I'm embarrassed to say I only remember some dude named Bowser singing on the Sha Na Na tv show. It also has the word "Go" in it, which is dangerous since that word has been known to set Kiernan off on a "Go-Go-Go" chant tangent. This time, however, it worked like a charm.

Momma is out of town, but only her songs will do.

Brought to you by the letter 'K'...Part One

He's learning letters now.

I think Wendy and I are striking a pretty good balance as parents. She is really good at teaching Kiernan new things, at helping him focus his play time on learning letters and colors, for instance. I'm really good, on the other hand, at getting carried away building little sand castles for him to destroy and surreptitiously watching ESPN while he picks bits of the previous night's dinner off the floor and eats them.

So we both have our roles.

A couple of weeks ago Kiernan and I were kicking around the house in the middle of the afternoon. I was writing a few things into my planner, things I had not gotten to before his nap ended. Having a planner, for me, is like creating a time capsule. In the future I can look back at its pages and see all of the things I put off doing until later (which is to say, never). I have to look at it this way to keep myself from totally living in denial.

I put my planner and pencil down and Kiernan went nuts. He wanted the pencil. I had put it on the couch table, out of his reach. Finding places that qualify as "out of his reach" is becoming increasingly more difficult. He is getting taller by the minute and, on top of that, he is a real climber. Pretty soon I'm just going to fasten a bungee cord to the ceiling and hang the TiVo remote from it, because I'm running out of places to hide it and still keep it accessible. I wish they'd just make one that levitates. Those of you with a TiVo understand that its remote is the one remote a toddler could really do some damage with if he got his hands on it. You can delete programs off of your TiVo without even turning the television on, and no one would be the wiser. At least until Wendy realized her Smallville Season's Pass had disappeared and no one ever heard from Christien again. Hell hath no fury like a woman who has been denied her Tom Welling. Or as I like to call him, Beef Wellington.

It is impossible to hide things from Kiernan, as well. You can distract him, if you are clever, but you can't simply say, "Hey, look over there...cows!" and then hide whatever he's interested in behind your back. He'll just look back at you, roll his eyes, and go after whatever you hid. I didn't want him to have the pencil because I could see one of two things happening--no, strike that...I could see two of two things happening. First he would try to eat it. Then he would run with it. While trying to eat it. Didn't seem like the best combination.

He would not let up about the pencil though, and finally it dawned on me that maybe he just wanted to write with it. This type of epiphany is a weird phenomenon with me. I should know better. I should be able to imagine that he wants to explore new things. But I get stuck in what he is able to do at any particular stage, then when he can do more, it's a surprise. So I got out some paper and pulled up his little chair and handed over the pencil.

He went to town on that paper. It was exciting to see him discovering a new thing. I immediately texted Wendy the following message: "We need to buy some crayons, ASAP."

He now has all manner of crayons and loves to spend time drawing. The challenge now is confining his drawing to the paper. If you turn away for a second, he's off and headed for the couch with several crayons in hand. This challenge is fine with me though. He's learning and developing, and even more important, finding things he likes.

Anything to keep him away from my TiVo remote.

For next time...Attack of the Letter K.

One...two in a million.

The word "two" is one of Kiernan's newer words. A couple weeks ago, I held up two fingers in the car. I wasn't counting anything, and I wasn't celebrating "V-E Day". I think I was practicing my finger spelling. Our sign language class is on something of a haitus, so to keep myself sharp I work on my finger spelling at random moments. If I'm driving I spell names and titles and whatnots that come on the radio. I have started doing this on autopilot. Often I find myself doing this while watching television and I don't even really realize I'm doing it.

I'm guessing a commercial for V for Vendetta came on the radio and I had my hand draped over the passenger seat. Kiernan saw me do the sign for "V" and he shouted, happily, "Two!" I got pretty excited.

I have yet to reproduce this, so it may have just been a coincidence. That or maybe he has checked that task off his Toddler To Do list and is uninterested in going back to it. He will repeat the word "two" if you ask him to, from time to time.

As I said a few posts back, we have a policy of trying to give him choices when we do certain things. When it is reading time before bed, we ask him to choose which book he would like to read, holding up two choices. We have started doing the same thing with certain foods at meal times. Recently I read in some parenting magazine that toddlers, especially as they get older, like getting to make a choice, it makes them feel like they are in control. It is also useful to remember that they will often choose the second choice, because it is the last thing they heard. So if you're looking to steer their choices, making what you want them to choose the second option can work as a strategy.

The other night at dinner we had moved on to the fruit portion of the meal. I got out some berries. Kiernan is into berries now, especially strawberries and blueberries. Cantaloupe was king around here for a long time, but now it's mainly good for squeezing in his tiny fist so that the juices run down his arm. This is, I assume, very satisfying. Although not really the reason I bother to buy cantaloupe and carefully cut it up for his meals.

So Wendy offered Kiernan some blueberries, but on this occasion asked him, "Kiernan, do you want one blueberry, or two? One? Or two?" She held up her fingers to reinforce the point.

He replied with, "Two."

She gave him two berries and we smiled at each other in amazement at the little things he's picking up and figuring out. We are doing this more and more lately. It seems every day he does something he could not do the day before and surprises us, and we just look at each other with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction and pride.

I recalled the statement from the magazine about toddlers choosing the last thing said, and, being a smart alec, asked, "Kiernan, would you like one berry, or a million? One or a million?"

"Two," he said.

We cracked up. He had foiled me again. Until the next time I asked, when he responded with his own version of the word "million". This further cracked us up.

As it turns out, "million" is now one of the words he likes to pull out to use on his own. Wendy demonstrated this for me this morning at breakfast. She said, "Kiernan, let's show Daddy how you like to say Daddy's new word." She then held up two of something or other he was eating and asked, "Kiernan, would you like one, or two?"

"Million," he said.

I figured some day someone would come along to tame my goofy, sarcastic sense of humor. I never thought it would be my own sixteen month old son.

I can't wait until he's old enough to start editing this blog. "That's not the way it happened, Dad." Given his rate of development, and his mother's will, I give it two more months.

He can't be a dog, he wears a hat and drives a car...

Kiernan and I were waiting for the Playhouse Disney show while Wendy did a little shopping. She came sprinting back when she found Goofy hanging around without a mile-long line of parents and kids waiting to meet him. He was gracious and a real gentleman, as you would expect.

Sadly, we never found Ariel (the Little Mermaid, for those of you who don't know) for a picture. That would have made Kiernan's day, I'm sure of it. Kiernan's day, I said. Not mine. I don't care about Ariel. Not one little bit.

A Banded, Bulbous, Snarfblatt

Kiernan went to Disney Land for the first time last Friday, March 31. This day was also, incidentally, Wendy's birthday. Kiernan's godmother Renee (Nee Nee), who works for The Mouse, suggested that we all take the day off and celebrate Wendy's birthday by taking Kiernan to Disney Land. Wendy jumped at the idea since her favorite thing to do on a birthday is to go off and do a fun experiential thingy. My suggestion that we watch all of the Star Wars films back to back did not qualify, somehow.

We got to the park sometime around noon. Thanks to the snail's pace on the 5 Freeway Kiernan was well rested; he napped for most of the two-hour drive, waking right on cue when we got to the parking structure at Disney. [On a side note, according to Renee this parking structure is the largest in the world...or was when they built it anyway. As parking structures go, it is incredibly well designed, with ramps that go right to whatever floor you're parking on so you don't have to do that spiral-drive all the way up and down.]

When we got into the park, Kiernan was raring to go, just incredibly excited to be there. In the picture to the right, he is doing a song/chant that we learned at school. The song/chant goes, "Go, go, go, go, gooooooo---STOP!" You roll your hands during the "go" part, then do the sign for "stop" at the "stop" part. He just kept chanting the "go-go-go" part over and over again while doing the hand roll. Hilarious.

As we made our way to our first ride--the carousel pictured at the top--we discovered that the place was packed. We had thought we were being clever by hitting the place on a week day. Not so much. Apparently it is spring break somewhere, because there were kids everywhere this day. So many people, and a virtual armada of strollers. Actually, one of the interesting things about my first trip to Disney Land as a parent was seeing how baby strollers are managed. People just park them and leave them outside of the rides. At the "It's a Small World" attraction there is an entire area set aside for stroller parking. Nobody guards this area. People just roll their strollers into the area and leave them there. It was weird. And kind of cool. This honor system in the middle of an amusement park. I'm sure it has always been done this way, I just never noticed it before I was in charge of a stroller.

Even though the park was busier than we thought it would be, it was still a great day. The temperature was mild and the sky was just overcast enough to make being outside constantly pleasant. The threat of rain probably kept more people away too, which was nice.

Kiernan was amazing all day long. We kept our options for the day open, basing how long we were going to stay at Disney on how well he was doing. If he had been done after a couple of hours, we would have packed up and gone back home. But he was totally cool for the day, and mainly enthralled by all the sights and sounds and people. He was not crazy, of course, about standing in line. In spite of the crowds, however, there was only one ride that required us to keep him in a long line. That was the Dumbo flying ride. That line was not fun. Even so, he's such a good kid that I really have no right to complain. Renee and I took him on that ride together, leaving Wendy to look after the stroller. This was our second ride of the day and we weren't yet hip to the whole Stroller Honor System yet.

I say I have no right to complain about the Dumbo line...fact is, I wouldn't even bring it up if it weren't for one little incident that happened while we were in line. The back of the line curled way around the ride, keeping us out of sight of Wendy and the stroller. After a good half an hour or so of creeping forward, I managed to finally catch a glimpse of Wendy through the ascending and descending flying elephants. She was easy to pick out of the crowd, even from my distant vantage point, as she was eating an ice cream sandwich the size of a hubcap. Renee and I are wrangling the toddler in a dog-years-long line and she's getting an early start on the treats. Nice. Oh well, it was her birthday.

I wasn't sure how Kiernan would take the ride, flying around in the air as it does, but he loved it. We stood in line forever and it was worth it because he had such a good time. Sadly the ride lasted for about ten seconds, and, as many of you would guess, when it pulled to a stop he immediately gave the "more" hand sign.

Next we went on the "It's a Small World" ride. If I never hear that song again in my life, that will be fine with me. Given how much Kiernan, and his mother, enjoyed the trip to Disney Land, however, I doubt that's gonna happen. Oh well. My feelings for the song notwithstanding, watching Kiernan during the ride made the moment for me. He was just amazed. This picture doesn't quite do the moment justice, since he looks more dazed than amazed here, but you get the idea. It was so cool to experience all of this through his eyes.

Later in the day, Nee Nee took us to see the live Playhouse Disney show at California Adventure. That was another wonderful thing to watch him experience. Singing and dancing and puppets and a giant bear. At the end of the show, bubbles came drifting down from the rafters. Great stuff. Plus I got to experience a character named Stanley for the first time. Stanley stars on a show on Playhouse Disney called...um..."Stanley". I can't wait until we start showing Kiernan more tv, because this looks like a great show. I know I'll run into a lot of kids' shows that are insipid, but I do look forward to finding the good stuff for Kiernan to watch. Thankfully, in Renee I've got somebody who can vet most of the programming and steer me to the best stuff, since she has to watch all of these shows for her job. Better her than me.

We kicked around California Adventure for awhile, taking Kiernan on a couple more rides in the Bug's Life area of the park. Aside from that area, California Adventure is kind of dopey. It has this cheapo, almost carnival-like feel that would be okay if you hadn't just been to Disney Land. And if the designers hadn't lost their nerve and slapped Disney characters onto some of the rides as a branding afterthought. Also, a Cannery Row ride for toddlers would have been nice. In general, more John Steinbeck rides would have been nice. I think his books really lend themselves to amusement park rides.

At the end of the day, our friends Heather and Joe and their son Sam met us in Downtown Disney for Wendy's birthday dinner. Her first choices for dinner--an Italian place and The Rainforest Cafe--were both booked solid, so Renee got us reservations at this Spanish restaurant called Catal. Very cool place with pretty good food. Dinner was late, and still Kiernan was awesome. He didn't care for the macaroni and cheese as it was not from a box or from KFC, but he ate some bread and then, when our food arrived, basically conked out right there on the table. No fussing. No major crash. He just put his head down and went to sleep. It was adorable.

Here's a picture of Wendy holding him after he fell asleep. Don't worry, I cut up her steak for her so she could eat.


Also, those of you who know how Wendy would react to the idea of having a birthday meal at a Spanish restaurant, don't worry about that either. Kiernan and I took her to Red Lobster a few days later. For the record, he didn't care for the macaroni and cheese there, either.