Blaming the Giraffe

Kiernan's Pap-Pap is visiting, making this a good day to get back on the blogging horse. More on that later. Maybe.

Pap-Pap, my dad, got into town yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, and Kiernan was unbelievably excited. It was so cool to see him expressing this in the days leading up to his grandfather's visit. Monday afternoon after school he was really talking about it, asking why Pap-Pap could not be at our house on that day, or as he has taken to saying, "this day", as in, "Why can't Pap-Pap come to our house this day?" I love the way he talks, picking up little language idiosyncrasies from the world around him and weaving them into his everyday speech.

When he went down for his nap on Monday, he asked again when Pap-Pap was going to arrive. I again answered that he was flying into town on Tuesday. Kiernan took a pretty good nap, and when he awoke he called that he was done sleeping. I went in to get him, peeking carefully into his room. He looked at me with skepticism for a moment, then a huge smile broke out over his face and his eyes lit up. "Pap-Pap! Is Pap-Pap here?" He was so excited. Sometimes he takes awhile to wake up after his nap, needing to be cuddled and reluctant to be cheered up. I really have no idea where this wake-up grogginess comes from; I'm always instantly rarin' to go when I'm awakened in the morning...yep...no pre-coffee grumpiness from me. Never. No sirree. At any rate, he had no trouble waking up this time.

Sometimes when he awakens from a nap he is confused about what day it is, thinking that because he went to sleep and then later woke up, it must therefore be the next day. This was the case after Monday's nap. It was touching to see him so jazzed about his Pap-Pap's visit. Sadly, I had to go ahead and crush that excitement by informing him that it was still Monday. This did not go over so well.

On Tuesday, however, when he went down for his nap, he did so with the certainty that his Pap-Pap would definitely be there when he woke up. As he prepared for sleep, he whispered to his mom, "I'm going to dream about Pap-Pap!" Beautiful.

When he woke up, and my dad was there to greet him, his face once again lit up. He was positively beaming, getting up and jumping into Pap-Pap's arms. For the rest of the day they were essentially inseparable. Anything that was normally my job was relegated to Pap-Pap.

In these pictures, the two of them are playing a game Pap-Pap has decided to call, "It Wasn't Me". From what I can gather, Pap-Pap tickles one of Kiernan's feet while Kiernan is doing something else (in this case he was writing the letters of the alphabet over and over again on the enormous map pictured in that second picture, after having circled the capitals of all the states on the map). When Kiernan looks at him and laughs, Pap-Pap says, "It wasn't me." Kiernan asks, "Who was it?" Then Pap-Pap comes up with a story. One of them that I heard when I was eavesdropping involved a giraffe that had escaped from the zoo and somehow ended up in the neighbor's yard. It had such a long neck it could reach all the way over the fence and across the yard and tickle Kiernan foot with its tongue.

It is amazing how long this game went on. At one point a kangaroo hopped over the other fence and the joey in its pouch reached down and tickled Kiernan's foot.

Great stuff.