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.