Picture of This Day

Getting a haircut from Godfather Darren. Tomorrow is Kiernan's first day of Kindergarten.

Don't worry about the slack-jawed-yokel look. We've got Finding Nemo playing to keep him from squirming too much. Not that it matters. He's great during haircuts. According to Darren, Kiernan is much better in the chair than his father, whose hair Darren also cuts.


Monday, August 31, 2009

BFF of This Day

Today we went to the park with Grance.


Kiernan and Grance woke up this morning and decided they wanted to go off to the park. Grance and Gammy were here for a quick one-night visit. This morning Gammy needed to do some work with Wendy, so Grance and Kiernan decided to head off to the park. I was lucky enough to be invited along.


Grance suggested Kiernan ride his bike (a gift from Gammy and Grance last year). So Kiernan saddled up and we headed out to a nearby park.

First thing he did upon getting to the park was climb a tree. It was one of those great trees that has grown slightly sideways so that you can basically just run up, and I couldn't resist. Kiernan saw me, exclaimed, "Hey! Look what my Daddy's doing!" Then he followed me right up.


This picture brought to you by "Do What I Say, Not What I Do" Industries.

Next Kiernan broke out the dinosaurs and started making friends.


He is so good at this. So much better than I am. Grance helped him somewhat with this, suggesting Kiernan break out his dinosaurs and invite these two young ladies to play.

What a smoothie.

Let's just say the girls were less than enthusiastic about the dinosaurs [pictured]. An ice cream cart showed up and they were pretty much out of there. Note to Future Kiernan: Grance is really great when it comes to history, cigars, scotch, and books.

Grance made it up to him.

They played on the slide and with the dinosaurs for a bit, having a great time. Eventually a new little dude showed up, and Kiernan went right about the work of making him his new friend. This kid was named Omar, and in no time the two of them were carrying all of Kiernan's dinosaurs up to the top of the slide for dinosaur races.


Omar and Kiernan had a blast playing, but eventually we did have to leave. Lunch must intrude. This did not sit well with Kiernan. Although he was hungry and thirsty--his amazing quote on the way home, "I'm starving of thirst!"--Kiernan was most reluctant to be parted from Omar, his friend of one hour. This has become the custom of late, as you may remember from a post about our recent trip to the beach. Kiernan makes a friend and is absolutely on the cusp of rending his garments when he is separated from this friend he has just met.

As I put on his socks and shoes, Kiernan looked at me and said, in this tiny mouse voice, "Can I give Omar a hug?"

On the verge of either laughing or crying myself, I said, "That's up to him, and you." Kiernan sidled up to him and they did this absolutely perfect child's version of the awkward male-friend hug.

Then we left.


This picture pretty much captures it. He sulked all the way home.

It's okay. Waffles for lunch at the coolest deli in the world made things better.

Mostly.

Picture of This Day

Naps are no longer on the official schedule. We eliminated them a few weeks ago when it became apparent Kiernan really wasn't going to sleep but once in maybe three tries. Also, we wanted to establish an earlier bedtime before the start of Kindergarten, and there was no way to do that with a late afternoon nap in the mix. So we instituted something called "Quiet Time" in the place of Nap Time.

Quiet Time lasts for an hour and it's basically just a time for Kiernan to read or play quietly in his room. He has the option to nap. He always scoffs when we remind him of this option.

You know what is cool? He has totally bought into this. He does his Quiet Time usually without complaint and almost never cheats. Sometimes I'll catch him staring at the clock in the last few minutes, but usually he just plays and reads contentedly.

Wendy just returned from a business trip back east yesterday afternoon. She had to get up early for a video conference today, so she was pretty much bushed. I insisted she take a nap and Kiernan begged her to take it in his room while he did Quiet Time. I was skeptical, but we decided to give it a try this once as he really missed her while she was away.

I had the monitor on to make sure he didn't pounce on Wendy in her sleep. He didn't. He whispered once to me for crayons and then hummed quietly to himself for a long while. When the end of the hour rolled around I suddenly realized the monitor had been quiet for some time. I crept in to look and the above picture is what I saw.

Sometimes you just need a nap.

Friday, August 13, 2009

A Shortcut to Tomatoes

While we were in Virginia, Kiernan and Pap-Pap picked Pap-Pap's first tomato of the season.

Sadly, I missed my first tomato back in California as it ripened while we were away. I've grown tomatoes before (I love homegrown tomatoes with a deep and abiding passion), but never all the way from a seed. In the past it's been from seedlings or adult plants bought at the hardware store. This time Kiernan and I planted the seeds ourselves and have nurtured them along.

A couple of weeks away did my plants no good, even though we had someone here to water them. I find they need more personal attention. Luckily Kiernan and I have become expert caterpillar hunters and the plants are doing pretty well. I see one of the tomatoes starting to go orange even as I write this.

The last picture in the slide show is the hunter-gatherer presenting his prize to Sandi.

QOTD #2

From our trip to the beach the other day. The father of the kids Kiernan ended up playing with, while the kids were working on making their hole bigger (and one of the sisters, Chloe I think, was doing a near constant loop of jumping in our hole, rinsing her hands in our bucket of water, looking at me and laughing, then running back around and jumping in the hole again.

As he grabbed his surfboard and headed back down to the beach to take another crack at catching a wave, this father looked at me and said,

"One is easy, my main man. Two is difficult. Four? Panda-freakin'-monium."

Uh-huh. That's why I've been careful not to spill water on mine. And I never, ever feed him after midnight.

QOTD

Well, really dialogue of the day, but DODT sounds like some sort of government agency or military policy.

Anyway, from the other night. While Kiernan was taking his bath.

Kiernan: Daddy, here is a quote from a book: 'The greedy Ornitholestes loves eggs.'

Me: What book is that from?

Kiernan: A dinosaur book.

That's all. This was not related to a conversation we were having. We weren't in fact, conversing. He just came out with this, all of a sudden.

Sand Before Time: Part II

After the bee we spent more time goofing around in the sand. One of Kiernan's favorite things to do at the beach is to play "the restaurant game". It's a weird little game we came up with last year. He recalled it from last year and requested it this year when we came to the beach again. It's a pretty dopey game, but he loves it. Basically the game involves digging a deep hole. I am in the hole, continuing to dig it out. He approaches the hole, clearly intending to jump into the hole on top of me.

I protest, putting on my best maitre'd voice. "I'm sorry sir. Do you have a reservation?"

He pounces on me. I determine he did not, indeed, have a reservation, and I demand he leave. He laughs at me and I throw him out of the hole, bellowing, "Get out! And stay out!"

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

A couple of things.

1. How exactly this game came about I cannot tell you.
2. Kiernan wants to play it constantly once the hole is dug.
3. If I don't throw him out of the hole, he demands I throw him out of the hole. He finds this hilarious.
4. Last year this was easier.

After the bee sting we played this for awhile longer until I found a rock buried at the bottom of the hole. We excavated it, and this shifted Kiernan's focus. At last! Suddenly he wanted to dig rocks.

We did this for awhile, and it was pretty cool. The above pictures are him tunneling for more rocks.

After we dug out about a dozen large rocks I was pretty much ready to hit the road. We'd been at the beach for about five hours by this time, and I figured it was time to go. It was at this point that Kiernan decided to make some new friends.

Let me just say that I am very proud of how my son makes friends. He is much better than I am socially. I just don't always appreciate his timing.

Next to us on the beach was a family with four kids. These kids had shown a great deal of interest in our super cool deep hole, and Kiernan invited them over to play in it. They had tried to dig their own hole, but they clearly found it inferior for as soon as Kiernan invited them over they began jumping in our hole with abandon. Much to their parents' chagrin.

They all spent some time pouncing into our hole in the sand--I relocated myself to our blanket for my first real break of the day. At one point the oldest, a boy named Aidan, asked if Kiernan and I would help them make their hole as deep as ours. I demurred, figuring if their dad wasn't going to help them out (he was mainly interested in surfing), I wasn't going to show him up. Kiernan--once again besting me socially--grabbed our shovels and ran over to join them at their hole.

What followed was about an hour more of play, and he was in heaven. They dug the hole for awhile and then they all headed down to the surf to play run-away-from-the-waves-and-shriek. All day I'd been trying to get Kiernan interested in the water to no avail. But one six-year-old boy suggests the same thing and he does not hesitate for a moment.

Beautiful.

They all played in the water until the adults had had enough. We all packed up and headed back to our cars.

On the way home, driving through Topanga Canyon, Kiernan was uncharacteristically silent. As we got close to home, he revealed why. Aidan.

This has happened quite a bit lately. Kiernan will meet a kid. Immediately bond with him. Then, as they have to part ways, say because they have met in an airport and are taking different flights, he will just break down because this kid also loves dinosaurs and he will never meet another kid like this in his life.

By the time we got home Kiernan was flat out sobbing. "Aidan! Aidan!" It was amazing. An ending worthy of Shakespeare. Or, at least Rocky.

The Bee's Knee

We were digging a trench in front of the volcano when it happened. The waves had been getting progressively closer to our play area, and while the hole we were working on had a pretty good wall in front of it, aside from a skimpy little moat the volcano was vulnerable. Kiernan wanted to help with the trench digging, so we were working on that together.

Suddenly Kiernan said, "Ouch!" He lifted up his knee, surprised. We both saw it at the same time. A little bee in the impression his knee had left.

"What was that?" Kiernan said, though I'm sure he knew.

"A bee, buddy. You just got your first bee sting," I replied, forcing a calm onto my voice that I did not feel. This calm didn't immediately pan out as Kiernan began crying in a high-pitched panicked cry.

I kept my calm as best I could, moving him to the blanket so that I could examine his knee. Wendy has spoken of being pretty severely allergic to bee stings for as long as I've known her, so this came to mind immediately. But what also came to mind was the time she stepped on a bee when she was pregnant.

Nothing happened, remember? I told myself, silently. Her foot got a little swollen and that's all. Calm down.

I wiped away the sand and tried to determine if the stinger was still there. Couldn't find it. Kiernan was still howling, but I could feel him calming down. "It hurts! It hurts!"

"Let's put some ice on it," I said, reaching into the cooler. "What do you think?"

"Yes." Calmer.

First I pulled out the blue ice pack thingy and put that on his knee. All that did was stain a bit of his knee blue, because the thing had a hole in it. I ditched it in favor of an actual ice cube which I wrapped in a paper towel. I rubbed that on his knee for a bit, then we looked at the sting site again. Just a little swollen. Like a mosquito bite.

A few more tears. Just a few. A few more minutes of ice. Laughter. Then it was back into the hole. The picture at the top of this post was taken probably five minutes after the incident.

Later he would proudly tell his mother about the whole thing on the phone.

For my part I took a bit longer to relax inside. I asked him a few times how he felt, how his knee felt and how his throat felt. Why? I don't know. I guess I had some idea that this question would help me determine if we were headed for anaphylactic shock or something. What I would have done if this turned out to be the case, I have no idea.

The thought that did hit me, when I felt most tense, was how utterly unhelpful that bromide about more people dying from bee stings than from shark attacks is. It seems I've read that a lot lately, as Kiernan has also been interested in sharks and just about every book about sharks mentions it. It came to me then that this should hardly be a comforting thought, even, ironically enough, fifteen feet from the Pacific Ocean.

In the end we had to worry about neither sharks nor bees. I do wonder, however, whether this will prove to make Kiernan less bee-phobic, or more.

I suppose we shall see.

Sand Before Time

Kiernan and I spent Sunday together at the beach, finding a way to get our minds off of the fact that Wendy was flying to Baltimore for work for a couple of days. There's probably a couple of pictures better than this one for starting off a post about the beach, but I just love the look on the face of that seagull behind Kiernan.

That bird reminds me of a bird from a trip we took to the beach last year. I can't find the post or I'd link to it, but the seagull during that visit grabbed Kiernan's fish toy and tried to fly away with it. Kiernan screamed and I chased the seagull until the bird dropped the toy.

During this trip we were keenly aware of the ever-present birds because Kiernan's precious dinosaurs were along for the trip. There was no way we were going to let one of those nutty birds abscond with one of the dinosaurs. No way.

If you look carefully at these pictures you will see a couple of things. You'll see the dinosaurs, of course. And you'll see Kiernan standing in a big hole.

This is the first time we have taken the dinosaurs to the beach. Basically that's because this is the first opportunity. Kiernan is crazy about dinosaurs right now. Crazy about them. And he has a ton of them. So, naturally, he wanted to bring them to the beach. I told him to choose which dinos came with us carefully. None with moving parts and certainly none with batteries should come along. He chose wisely, selecting a modest group of fifteen for the trip.

As for the big hole, well that has become a staple of our trips to the beach. Last year I would start to build a castle and then dig a hole. Kiernan would destroy the castle and jump in the hole. This year I made a volcano the dinosaurs could climb and then dug the hole. Kiernan did not destroy the volcano. Progress. Maturity.

The hole, as usual, attracted plenty of attention from other beach goers. The dinosaurs did too. Especially from two groups. Toddler boys and fathers. The toddler boys would slow down as they walked by the scene of the dinosaurs on the sand volcano. Their jaws would drop. Kiernan would ask, "Why is he looking at my dinosaurs?" The dads would just smile. One of them said, "Wow. What a cool prehistoric scene!"

I took plenty of pictures of the dinos. Here's my favorite. Dilophosaurus on the volcano.


Shortly after I took this picture we experienced a first. A little scary, but we weathered it. What was it? Kiernan's first bee sting.


I'll talk about that more in the second part of this post.

Picture For This Day

Nana and Pop gave Kiernan this super cool map showing animals all over the world. We all loved it, and spent all kinds of time pointing out the animals we knew.

Back home in California tonight. Safe after a long trip home. Missing family.

Love to all.


Seaford, VA
Saturday, August 1, 2009

Picture of This Day

Late afternoon swim in the neighbors' pool. Yes, we had permission.


Gloucester Pt., VA
Sunday, August 2, 2009

Picture of This Day

My mother's sister, Aunt Diane, asked Kiernan to show her his best dinosaur pose for a picture before dinner this evening.

Voila.


Seaford, VA
Saturday, August 1, 2009