The Non Pie-olent Protest

One of the lovely little byproducts of a grandparent visit is the sleeping in that often happens.  Kiernan is so excited to see the grandparent he can barely contain himself each morning.  As a result, his mom and dad get to steal a bit more shut-eye.  I want to take a moment right now to say this is not our primary joy in having visits from Kiernan's grandparents these days.  No no no no no.  We love having our parents visit because we love our parents.  First and foremost.  Getting a couple more hours sleep each morning is far down the list.  Way far down.  Really.

One morning we arose to find a note on the floor similar to the note pictured.  Kiernan spent a lot of Pap-Pap's visit acting like he was a seal, and Pap-Pap was his owner.  They developed a whole lovely fiction around Kiernan being a seal, doing tricks and getting fresh fish as reward.  He spent a lot of time going "Arp! Arp! Arp!"  Pap-Pap would translate.  I'll just go on the record and say that this was not annoying at all.  Nope.  I'll also say I consider it one of life's little miracles that this seal game seems to have left with Pap-Pap.

So the note we found on the floor that morning informed us that the two of them were running off to join the circus because there was no pie in the house.  We'd taken my dad to lunch at one of my favorite spots, a diner called Four'n 20.  They make some lovely food there.  One of the best BLT&G sandwiches I've ever had (that is Bacon Lettuce Tomato and Guacamole, of course).  But most importantly they make pie.  Oh, goodness do they make pie.

We took Dad there after a mini-golf outing with Kiernan's friends Ryan and Kyra and we took a bunch of pieces of pie home.  Those were dinner that night.  The boys woke up the next morning disappointed with the fact that the pie had not magically regenerated overnight.  So they ran away in protest.

I find this reaction to be entirely reasonable.  Being a pie lover* myself. 

Luckily the boys returned, but a few days later we found the above note on the door.  Fearing the guillotine I made a special trip back to Four'n 20 while Kiernan and Pap-Pap were in school on Monday.  Thus I avoided a full-scale revolt.

I need another picture to end this post.  I'm just gonna use a random pic from Pap-Pap's visit.  This has nothing to do with pie, and isn't a high-quality photograph at all, but it's too lovely not to post somewhere.  So here it is...

Dad is talking with Sandi.  I totally stole this moment, as the very next second Kiernan scrambled away and under Pap-Pap to keep me from getting another picture, as he is wont to do.


*DOWN WITH CAKE!

Picture For This Day

Kiernan and Pap-Pap on their way in to school for the day.


Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Another Picture For This Day (from that same day)

Marble Party Day happened to coincide with another wonderful event: the arrival of Pap-Pap for a week long visit.  Happiness ensued.  Also ice cream.


Woodland Hills, CA
November 9, 2010

Picture For This Day

 

 

Last Tuesday, Kiernan's class had a Marble Party.  The class earns one of these by getting their jar of marbles filled; as they do great things as a class throughout the day, their teacher puts marbles in a jar.  Once that jar is filled...Marble Party.

The class voted on a pajama theme for the party, and in the afternoon they watched part of a movie (I think it was a movie with Lilo in it, but not Lilo & Stitch).  Wendy broke out some brand new pajamas on that morning, which was good because the ones he wanted to wear were clearly too small for him.  Most everything of his is getting too small for him far too quickly.  He grows like crazy.

He was so excited about the new pajamas that he immediately proceeded to get syrup all over them.  Oof.

Anyway, the Marble Party was a great success.

Woodland Hills, CA

November 9, 2010

 

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

Rainbow, uncle, and nephew!  What does it mean?!?

A couple of pictures from our May visit to Virginia.

Gloucester Point, VA
May 21, 2010

Slideshow For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

A lovely sunset from one of our favorite places.  Think of it as a little mental health break for the day.


San Clemente, CA
February 13, 2010

Quote For This Day

One of the final rituals of bedtime around these parts is snuggling, in which one of us parents cuddles with Kiernan as he falls asleep.  Usually this task/privilege falls to Wendy, but as she is off gallivanting in Missouri with her wacky teacher friends presently, snuggling is my job this week.

Bedtime tonight, as his breathing began to change, signalling the transition to sleep, he made the following statement in a decidedly sleepy voice...

"Pap-Pap will be here in five days."

We talked to the East Coast Murawski folks last night, but we didn't talk about this at all today.  Sweet that this is on his mind as he drifts off tonight.  I counted off the days in my head.

"Yep," I said.  "You're right.  He'll be here in five days."

A contented sigh was his only response.

Picture For This Day: Stuff I Missed from 2010 Edition

A couple of lovely pictures I think I missed from our January trip to Virginia.  Kiernan out on the shore of the York River with Pap-Pap and Sandi.

Gloucester Point, VA
January 2010

Between the Aunt and the Deep Blue Sea

From the 'Stuff I Missed in 2010 Files':

Last March we celebrated a big birthday for Kiernan's awesome mom.  We had a surprise celebration in lovely Oxnard, CA.  After the surprise party proper, Wendy and her girls went off to play mini golf.  While they were doing that, the men (such as they are) took the kids down to the beach (such as it was) to play.  After a couple of hours of this goofing around, one of the girls joined us.  A very special girl.  Aunt Amy.

Let me tell you, it was so cool to see Amy at this time.  We'd just gotten the news that Amy was expecting a Quinn, so it was exciting to lay eyes upon her again.  But also, for me, it was welcome to have Kiernan's black-hole-like need for attention be focused on someone else for a few minutes.  The day--not to mention the previous weeks of surprise party planning--had been a doozy.  If not for my awesome cohorts, Dr. Rachel and Dr. Sally, I would never have made it.  So Amy showed up at a great time.  Kiernan needed a break from me, and I needed a break from thinking.

They proceeded to work together on a project.  A writing project.  First Amy wrote something.

Awww! Isn't that sweet?  Aunt Amy is the bestest ever!

I snapped pictures, happy to have another adult around to keep his attention.  Next Aunt Amy encouraged Kiernan to write something in the sand.  Something lovely, for the Woman of the Moment...his aunt.

Look at that there!  How beautiful is that?  Kiernan loves his Aunt Amy.  He loves her so much he's taken the trouble and time to put it down for all posterity in a substance the Bible thinks so highly of it suggests you build your house upon it.  I think I learned that in Sunday School.

This was all well and good.  Very sweet.  Then Aunt Amy and Nephew Kiernan started on a new project.  I was told not to look.  Hmm.  Should I have been suspicious?  Nah.  What, me worry?

A boy and his aunt.  Yep.  Good times.

Let's just say I'm looking forward to some quality Quinn-and-his-uncle time in the years to come.

Twilight of the Toa

There he is.  Our sweet little boy.  He hasn't been the same since that rally he attended in DC over the weekend.

In case you didn't know it, Sunday night was Halloween.  The tradition in these parts is for Kiernan to go out trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with his friend Sam.  Sam and his folks, a group that now includes Sam's little brother Ben, come on over and we all head out to hunt and gather.  Excepting one Halloween a couple of years ago, when we were on a family trip in Hawaii, it has always been thus.  I hope it continues.

I imagine you're having trouble sussing out what Kiernan's costume is in the above picture.  I'm surprised at you. Really.  He's clearly Vakama.  I can almost see you nodding at your computer right now and thinking to yourself, "Vakama.  Of course!  One of the Turaga of Mata Nui.  He was once the Toa Metru of Fire, if I'm not mistaken!"  And yes, you are correct.  He was once the Toa Metru of Fire.  Nicely done!

Maybe the homemade fire-sword threw you off?  Hmm.  I bet if I'd put up a proper picture with the mask down you would have gotten it straight away.  So here...

See?

Okay, okay.  Enough.  Vakama is a Bionicle, Kiernan's most recent obsession.  For awhile it was all Bionicles all the time in this house, but I think the obsession is beginning to fade.  This is a good thing in that the stores seem to have run out of Bionicle characters for us to buy.  I'm just relieved he stayed interested enough in the characters for the costume to still be relevant.  He loved being Vakama, even if he plays with the Bionicle toys less and less.

As the years progress, I'm finding this phenomenon more and more unnerving.  He goes through cycles of interest in toys--Star Wars figures for instance--and subjects--dinosaurs, the Solar System--as I'm sure all kids do.  I just never could have foreseen of how this would create an oddly stressful dynamic at this time of year.  I'm not just talking about planning a costume, although that's part of it.  I'm talking also about the impending holidays, birthday included, and how these cycles impact wish lists.  We tell folks what he's into, or he declares what he wants to put on his wish lists (this year: "A LOT of  Bionicle toys!") and we cross our fingers hoping some goofy friend of his doesn't nudge him over into something new--Pokemon cards, I'm looking at YOU!--before we claw our way into the new year.

I know this is an idiotic thing to be stressful about in a world where so many children want for the most basic things, things like fresh water, but such is the world of parenting.  I reckon this dynamic will only get more volatile in the years to come, so for now there's another blessing to count.

Trick-or-treating went nicely for the most part.  Ben, Sam's little brother, dropped out of the expedition well before the older boys.  His dad, Joe, brought him back to the house where I was on candy-dispensing duty.  This was an unexpected plus for me, as Ben and I haven't ever had a chance to bond before this.  We conversed on a wide range of topics, from Reese's to lollipops, and I think we really made a connection.

While I missed the actual house-to-house action, I did get to see the photographs.  Pretty neat.  I shall use my favorite to end this post, because it perfectly complements the picture up there at the top.  Kiernan, fierce warrior...and...

...reader.

When I saw this picture I laughed out loud.  This house is around the corner from ours, and I saw these little gravestone decorations last week when I was out for a walk.  I noted in passing that I should stop sometime and read the little jokes printed on them with Kiernan, but this thought flitted right out of the transom of my mind and I never did.  It was oddly pleasing, then, to see him crouching and checking out the jokes with his friend in the midst of gathering all that candy.

Good stuff.

[P.S. Hopefully I'll get some more and better pictures from Sam's mom, Heather, and post those later.]

Into His Gourd

As I mentioned in the previous post, there's a lot of excitement around here about Halloween.  So last weekend we joined the festivities in earnest with our annual trip to the pumpkin patch.  We have a local school called Pierce College that started as an agricultural school and maintains a couple hundred acres of its land for farming to this day.  On one side of the campus there is a farm center which hosts a Halloween Harvest Festival, which is a fun place to go and get a couple of pumpkins this time of year.  It's a tradition.  A couple of you have joined us there in years past.  I think Pap-Pap went one year, and Hope another.

I will confess that sometimes I don't always have the best attitude about this.  In addition to the fact that the pumpkins are much more expensive here, I'm not a big fan of paying a lot of money to be around large groups of large people eating fried foods, which seems to be the point of most festivals and fairs.  But both Kiernan and Wendy were excited so we did it again.  I'm glad we did.  The adventure started off on a very good note.  After parking the car down the street (the lot at the Farm Center was overflowing), I joined Kiernan and Wendy in the unbelievably long line for buying admission passes and ride/activity tickets.  I tried to convince Wendy that this was a bad idea, that we should just go to the pumpkin patch area and skip the rides this year since admission was going to expensive and annoying, when a young woman interrupted us.

"So when you buy an admission package you get a number of free admissions," she said, holding out three free tickets.  "And we have these extra activity vouchers.  It's so crowded in there and the kids are just on this crazy sugar high so I figure we'd better get them out of here while we can."  She smiled and handed over the the free admissions and the activity tickets.  Then she turned to go.

Wendy and I stammered our thanks.  She turned to acknowledge us, waved, and disappeared.

"Well, that's that," Wendy said, pulling us out of line and heading for the entrance.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Who was she?"

"I don't know," Wendy repeated.  "You just saw the first time I ever talked to her."

"You mean," I responded, confused.  "You didn't meet her before I walked up."

"Nope.  She must've just seen three people standing together."

It was so weird, the way she approached us.  The way she started talking to us as if we'd talked to her previously or something.  And then she just disappeared.  The whole thing was like one of those stories about angels at Christmas.  A Halloween angel?  Okay.  I'll take it.

We headed inside and cased the joint, trying to decide what activities to do.  Kiernan immediately opted to spend one ticket on the bouncy house.  He loves those things.  Goes nuts for them.  I think even if we had one permanently installed in our driveway, he'd never get tired of it.  After a few minutes of bouncing he moved to the giant bouncy slide and spent another ticket there.  The picture at the top of this post catches him immediately after hitting the slide a second time (two slides per ticket, don'tcha know).  Then we got some food (an ice cream sandwich for him, popcorn for Wendy, and a frozen lemonade for me) and sat down to decide upon our next move.  How to spend that final ticket?

"I want to do the corn maze," Kiernan said.

Ugh, I thought.  Not the corn maze.  We've never done the corn maze.  To me it looked like this weird combination of dopey and dangerous.  Dopey, because the idea of walking through the corn didn't seem particularly stimulating on the outside looking in.  Dangerous, because there were large warning signs that said variations on, "If you get lost.  Don't panic.  A maze master will find you."  When we inquired as to the cost the girl working the ticket booth said, "If you get lost, just yell for help."

Yell for help?

I tried talking Kiernan out of it, but he wasn't having any of it.  He insisted and soon had swayed Wendy to his way of thinking.  So, we bought thirteen more tickets and headed in.  Once again, I was glad they convinced me.  The corn maze was neat.  Easy enough to navigate and clearly fun for Kiernan.  We got a little game card the size of a postcard that directed us on a fact-finding mission to find signs in the corn where questions about the farm on the card were answered.  At each sign was a hole punch so we could prove we'd found the answer.  We even ran into one of Kiernan's classmates, there with her mother.  It was lovely.  And I've got the slideshow to prove it.

Finally we headed over to the pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin and get a family picture with a giant fake pumpkin.

All in all, a pretty cool time.