Picture of This Day

Two great things about today. 1) Mom's back with the family after doing some good work in Baltimore. 2) Mom and Dad get lunch at The Cheese Shop in Williamsburg.

Hold up...let me throw in a third thing: 3) We got to share said lunch with [sister/aunt] Hope and Nana.

Happy times.

BTW, I begged him to give me a decent "normal" smile for the picture. He eventually did. But in the end I thought, this is a blog for him. Might as well honor his wishes.


April 30, 2011
Williamsburg, VA

Picture of This Day

Out and about with Nana on this day, we went to her favorite garden store to get a couple of plants and see a huge fish. I mentioned this fish in a PoTD from a visit last year, when we again went to Ken Matthews' Garden Center with my mom. This is one cool garden center nursery store place. Kiernan was reluctant to go to this place, as he is almost always reluctant to run any errand not involving buying him a Bionicle. But I kept mentioning the gigantic koi. He didn't recall until we drove up and parked.

"Oh! I remember this place!"

He loved seeing the fish, which you can see in the photo above. See that big whitish fish right at his elbow in the photo? The big fish is beyond that, and slightly orange, and about forty percent larger than that white fish. That white koi swims. The orange big one...he cruises.


April 29, 2011
Grafton, VA

Picture of This Day

Hanging with Pop.


April 28, 2011
Seaford, VA

Picture of This Day

Once more up in Lego Paradise. This time with Pap-Pap.


April 27, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Picture of This Day

Kiernan conveys his feelings on me taking pictures of him as he plays this morning with Sandi in Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland.

Actually, now that I think about it, I believe he learned this face from her! I'm certain I've seen her convey certain of her opinions on various of my doings in a similar fashion.


April 26, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Adventures in Eating Out

Today my dad got a bee in his bonnet to try out a new restaurant called Hibachi Grill. He loves Japanese restaurants, or rather, he loves Japanese restaurants where the chef cooks at your table. He wants nothing to do with sushi, which is my favorite food, and this is fine because his wife and other son want nothing to do with sushi either. Neither does my son. Or my wife. So off to Hibachi Grill we went.

I tried pointing out that the ad seemed to me a bit--in the parlance of my brother--sketch. I mean it describes a restaurant that is a "Sushi Buffet" that also has "a HIBACHI and GRILL section where you can select your favorites and we will cook them for you on the HIBACHI at no additional charge." How about that? A restaurant that will cook your food for you at no additional charge. Pretty good! Or at least I thought so until I flipped the circular ad coupon from which I got this copy to the back side where the prices were.  Guess how much for dinner at Hibachi Grill Sushi Buffet. Go ahead and guess. I'll wait.

Give up?

$7.99.

Oooooo-kay. Yes Virginia, I realize we are in Virginia and things aren't supposed to cost as much as they do in California, but eight bucks for a sushi buffet? Really? Um...here's my thing. There are things I will skimp on. Things I'll look for a deal on. Sushi is not one of those things. Why? Because I understand that sushi grade fish costs a certain amount, and if somebody is charging eight bucks for a buffet of it, they're gonna have to cut costs somewhere. And that somewhere is eventually going to be on the quality and freshness of the raw food I'm about to ingest. No thanks. Sushi is a calculated risk as it is. It's something I dearly love, but it is inherently a risk to eat raw fish. I don't need to up the ante.

But, what the heck, Dad wanted to try something new. I figured I'd just steer clear of the sushi.

Turned out not to be an issue. The place wasn't open for business yet, as we found when we got to the front door. Puts out coupons as happy as you please. Coupons that expire in four days. Can't be bothered to be open for business yet, though.  Maybe consider giving us a clue that you're not open yet in your ad. Maybe? Just something to consider, Mr. Hibachi.

So Sandi and Pap-Pap scrambled and came up with a new plan, a different Japanese place with Hibachi cooking at which they'd eaten in the past. Kiernan, for his part, was pretty excited. He figured for a brief moment that the closed restaurant meant we would all have to settle for his favorite place, Burger King. Sorry buddy...no way.

We headed to the new place and had a great time. The top picture is Kiernan and Mason watching the antics of our chef with delight, with my dad watching them.

Before you judge this to be just another of my crappy pictures, let me lend some context. This is the moment in the meal when the cool hibachi chef paints a smiley face with cooking oil from his squeeze bottle on his grill then sets a flame to it. WOOSH! Next...

When those flames kicked up, a split-second after the initial surprise Kiernan slid out of his seat and backed away from the table. We're talking lightning speed here folks. He nearly wound up in the lap of the nice lady sitting at the hibachi table behind him. She smiled and took it in stride, offering to let him join her party. He declined, wedging himself behind the protective shoulder of Pap-Pap.

Overall it was a very nice meal, and a great time.

***

Addendum:

This morning we started our day by going to a lovely little donut place in Gloucester, a new place that is one of those new local gems that makes something amazing. It was in a long strip mall that was mostly empty but for three open businesses. All other spaces were vacant. What three stores were open? Well, there's the donut shop, Sunrise Donuts, as I alluded to a moment ago. The others...well...if I didn't know I was in Virginia already...

Anyway, the donuts really were good. Especially if you love actually tasting the lard when you're eating a donut. Mine was a mocha cream donut, and I kept wondering if it was also cream filled. Nope. That's the lard you're tasting. But seriously, it was a sweet little place with a lovely young lady working who was very, very helpful. Unfortunately unlike the ladies at the unlikely ice cream shop/convenience store near Dad & Sandi's house, she could not make coffee to save her life. Oof. Worst cup of coffee ever. However, the great sign on the carafe made up for it.

Ha Ha! They don't know how to use apostrophes in Gloucester! Bunch of rubes!

A sign like this really is a gem. It makes my day a little bit. When you see a sign like this, you don't expect you're going to see a better one in the same day. Remember when I was talking about finding out the Hibachi Grill wasn't yet open for business? We found out when we saw this sign on the door:

Ha Ha again! Funny sign. Yes it's wrong to make fun of people who clearly aren't yet proficient in English...but still, how funny is that sign! Rubes and foreigners...gotta love em!

But wait. Remember how I talked about reading from the circular coupon ad thingy? Remember how I riffed on them putting out coupons without yet being ready for business? Remember my mini-rant about sushi buffet prices and my little joke about no extra charge for cooking your food? I read and re-read that little coupon thingy. I pored over it looking for clues about the restaurant. It seems I missed one teensy little detail.

Right there, in bright yellow letters. At the very top of the ad.

My apologies, sweet donut girl. My apologies, folks who are about to open a new business. Your little grammar foibles have nothing on my idiocy. You have excuses for not being able to write perfect English. For my inability to read it, I have none.

Legos in the Attic

How cool it is to go on a trip for spring break and get to visit some grandparents? Pretty cool. How cool is it  to get to have a borderline epic playdate during this visit to said grandparents? Awesomely cool. That was today. Awesomely cool.

This morning Ben's dad delivered him unto Pap-Pap and Sandi's house for his playdate with his old pal, Kiernan. Ben is one of Sandi's former kindergarten students, one of a few kids Kiernan met and befriended when we visited last year and joined Sandi's class for an after school excursion to a strawberry farm. Kiernan remembered a couple of those kids, but he remembered Ben most vividly, because Ben was the one into Bionicles.

The things that bring us together.

The first thing that happened in today's playdate, once the boys were reintroduced and their respective Bionicles were acquainted with one another, was the unveiling of Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland. Okay, that's not really what they call it around here, but I'm calling it that because I'm writing this. If they want to correct me, they can leave a comment below. Go ahead. I dare you. HA!

Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland--just rolls off the tongue doesn't it--is a little space my dad built into the attic area of the house for my brother Mason, when Mason was a kid. It's a cozy little area with a light and a fan, and a skylight. It also has about a million Lego pieces in seven hundred or so bins. The picture at the top of this post shows present-day Mason in said space with his nephew later on during today's playdate. You see Kiernan? See the outline of a dark square behind him? That's the door to STULA.  Here's a shot of the little space from across the room and downstairs.

It's a pretty cool space, though somewhat tough to make out here. It exists over the kitchen (if you look down in the lower lefthand corner you can see the fridge door open) and can only be accessed by using the attic dropdown ladder in the hall. What you cannot see here is that Sandi and Dad have placed a tallish stepstool in the middle of the kitchen so that an adult could, by standing on the top step, peer into the space and watch the kids at work. That's one way I know it's a cool space.

Another way I know is from hearing about the exclamations of joy and incredulity that issued forth from Ben and Kiernan when Pap-Pap led them up there for the first time. Things like "This is the coolest place ever!" and "I want to live here forever!" were apparently said. I say "apparently" because I was sound asleep during the early hours of this playdate. I know what you're thinking. Lazy, right? In my defense I was up until about five in the morning recording a podcast. So I was out cold for a reason.

Okay. That was weak. Who am I kidding? I'd have been out no matter what. Sleeping in is one of the perks of visiting grandparents that you never think is going to be as valuable as people intimate it is. But it is. Oh yes...it is.

The important thing here is not my sleeping habits but the fact that I did indeed wake up in time to get a few pictures of the gang of two still enjoying Mason's Lego Attic Hideaway.  Later when I returned from a long walk I got the top picture of Mason enjoying it with them too. The neat thing about this later visit to the attic was how Kiernan reacted to it. When I got back from my walk I noticed him down on the floor in the living room, playing with some other Lego pieces with Sandi. I glanced up to the attic window opening over the kitchen and saw Ben up there and heard my brother's voice coming from up there too. I opened my mouth to ask what was up and noticed my son's brow was furrowed. Sandi smiled, her eyes wide. Just then Kiernan called out something about going down to the beach now, and I could tell implicit in his voice was a sense of "at long last!" I don't think there was a response from the attic. Kiernan's brow furrowed more deeply and he made a gesture of clear frustration.

I waited to see what would happen. These are the times that try a six-year old's soul. Especially his. He has trouble managing it sometimes during a playdate, or on the playground at school, when his friends don't want to play what he wants to play and just keep doing what they want to do. This can lead to meltdowns. Anger. Gnashing of teeth.

Not this time.

After a few moments he disappeared from the room and I heard him climbing up the stairs and making his way back up into the attic where he reintegrated himself into the Lego playing (as you can, again, see from the first picture). I was pretty proud of him. He'd had some time of sulking, a bit of impatience and frustration, but in the end he didn't take his ball and go home. He worked it out. I love seeing that.

And karma smiled upon him, for in short order the whole crew headed down to the beach.

When I got back from driving Mason to work, I found Kiernan down at the beach playing with Ben in the little stream that leads from the neighborhood pond down to the York River. They had built a dam and were busy sending meteors down from the heavens to the sand houses they had built in the shadow of said dam. I could paste a number of panels from the best comic of all time, Calvin & Hobbes, to illustrate my absolute joy at watching him play like this, but I think you get the idea. Imagination ruled the day.

Not long after this the warning was given that the playdate was about to draw to an end. Even with a generous extension allowed by Ben's father, one that took the playdate up to the dinner hour, the boys were still insistent that they had not had enough time to play this day. Hours playing with Legos, a break for lunch, followed by hours playing with sand was simply not enough. They had to return to the Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland for one more round of building! This had to be done! But no, Sandi and Pap-Pap held firm. There would be no time for another round. By the time we got back up to the house and hosed off both boys, Ben's dad would surely have arrived for pickup.

In a last ditch attempt to sway them, Ben decided to dance.

This dance went on for a long time. A long time. At times hilarious. At times touching. It expressed one child's struggle against a universe that is about to deny him play. Finally his companion had to run in and interrupt. Give it up dude. Play while you can.

Eventually the boys got back down to playing--this time trying to dig an extensive network of tunnels with Pap-Pap's help--for a few more minutes until Ben's dad, inevitably arrived. As he made his way down to us at the beach, word reached the boys. They reacted by greeting him with open arms and showers of gratitude.

You didn't believe that did you?

Picture of This Day

After finding his Easter basket on Sunday. First things first: read the book that was in the basket.

Happy Easter!

April 24, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Picture of This Day

With Sandi and Pap-Pap after the egg hunt on Saturday at Denbigh Prebyterian Church.


April 23, 2011
Denbigh, VA

Picture of This Day

At the bookstore today. Kiernan asked if he could climb into Pap-Pap's lap to read for a bit. How's that magazine now, Dad?


April 22, 2011
Williamsburg, VA

Picture of This Day

On the airplane, on the way to Virginia. Assembling his new Lego set.


April 21, 2011

Picture of This Day

Another Spring Break day, another playdate, more flying through the air. This time at a really cool park in our area.

Here he is the moment before, preparing to take flight.

April 20, 2011

Picture of This Day

Spring Break playdate with his friend Oliver (in the background) at his friends Max and Rachel's house. They had a blast.


April 19, 2011

Picture For This Day

Drawing on the floor of the kitchen.


April 16, 2011

Laser Dad

On Saturday we attended the birthday party of one of Kiernan's friends. The party was held at a local laser tag place called Ultrazone, a place that has a bunch of arcade games--witness Kiernan riding a fake motorcycle in one above--and three comically tiny rooms for pizza and cake eating, as well as a black-lit arena for laser tag matches.  We've attended birthday parties there a couple of times, and Kiernan loves it.

First the kids are shepherded into a dark room and given instructions on how to play the game by the Game Master assigned to their party. These young men and women are really, really good at their jobs. They handle kids expertly, mixing in the requisite dumb birthday party jokes with the necessary rules of the facility ("You run, you're done" for example). After this the kids are separated into teams and go into a staging area where they get their vests and unhook their laser blasters. Finally they pour into the arena and start attacking each other.

Parents are allowed to play to, although the last few rounds I've preferred to be a witness only. Something about pointing a gun, even a fake one, at my kid seemed oogy to me. Last time we were there, probably a year ago, I just wanted to shadow Kiernan as best I could anyway. He seemed so fragile then. He still does in some ways, but strapping that vest to him this time brought home in a new way how much he has grown in a year.

At Ultrazone the kids have a match, then go out to see their scores, play more arcade games, cram into the tiny rooms for pizza, play more arcade games, then cram back into the tiny rooms for cake. After that they head back into the arena for their final match. In last year's final match a bunch of dads I didn't know decided to play, huddled to the side of the little black prep room and strategized, then dominated the kids. They basically camped at the opposing bases and kept knocking them out. For my part I was just saying, "Really guys? That's what you're going to do? At a kid's party? Jerks." But the techno music was pounding far too loudly for them to hear me. And really, a bunch of jerk dads who would do that aren't gonna give a hoot what sensitive stay-at-home dad thinks.

At this party, though, I knew all the parents and a couple of them encouraged me to play. One of them, we'll call her Julie, called me a chicken. Actually did the whole chicken wing thing and made chicken noises. Right. Like that's gonna work.

It did.

I played and I loved it! I was on Kiernan's team and I had a blast. I worked with him at times, stalking through the semi-darkness and watching his back. Other times he went off on his own and I did too. There was no base-camping (I think incidents like last year caused Ultrazone to reshape its scoring so that any one player can only knock out an opposing base once). It was really cool. Our team lost, badly, but it was really cool.

At the end you check your vest's digital readout to find out your codename and head out to the arcade area to see your score. What is that you ask? What was my codename?

Punisher.

You have been warned.

No pics from inside the arena because it was too dark and camera flashes would have been annoying.




[NOTE: I doubt this will interest most of you, but I've started writing a weekly column for a video gaming site I frequent called Quarter to Three. It's the same site for which I do the weekly podcast. This column is titled "Weekly Little Big Planet" and it's basically a chance for me to talk about what I've been playing, and often--but not always--how Wendy and Kiernan feel about it. If you're interested in video games, or my writing, check it out. Be warned, though, the language there is more likely to be more adult and NSFW than it is here.]

[UPDATE: In the column that comes out this Thursday I talk a bit about the trip to Ultrazone described in this post here.]

A Break from the Madness

After spending Saturday morning at his friend's birthday party--you'll hear about that tomorrow--Kiernan needed to unwind with an impromptu playdate with his nextdoor friend Raudel. They did their usual Bionicle battles, but at one point they took a break and Kiernan started reading to his friend from one of his magazines.

Kiernan loves getting magazines. He gets so excited when one arrives in the mail, and I find this so enlightening. I love getting magazines too, especially my Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country, but sometimes I can view getting them as a chore. This is a weird thing to say, but some of the reading can be dense--I'm looking at you, New Yorker--and I'm a fairly slow reader. Kiernan's joy at getting a magazine in the mail is so pleasing to me. He gets a couple of them. One called Ask that was a gift from Renee. And the one he's reading above, National Geographic Kids, that was a gift from Nana and Pop.

I was cruising by the two boys, carrying laundry or something and not realizing they'd taken a reading break when I heard Kiernan read the following,

"Europe's six smallest countries could fit inside Rhode Island, with room to spare."

I love that my boy has this side to him. All these sides to him. Waging Bionicle war with his friends. Wrestling like a maniac. Pillow fighting. And taking a break to stimulate the mind.

Best kid ever.

Picture of This Day

After school the other day, again playing with his friends from the neighborhood. They all decided it was time to do some serious drawing.

BTW, thanks to Sandi for this super great gigantic roll of butcher paper.


April 14, 2011

Picture For This Day

Another shot from yesterday's fundraising carnival. This one without the semi-veiled political commentary, but with his good friend Oliver in transit through the bouncy house structure.


April 9, 2011

Picture of This Day

Goodness but does this boy love bouncy houses. In any configuration.

Today was the annual carnival fundraiser for Kiernan's school. As you may or may not know, it is necessary to hold events like this many times a year in order to be able to pay for such non-necessary things as art and music at your kid's public school. I could go into all the things our tax dollars are being spent on instead of education, but I don't want to turn this sweet little blog into something political.

Annnnyyyyywayyyy...Kiernan had a blast and the whale-ton of work by the parents just might save a teacher's job in the end. So there's that.

April 9, 2011

Picture For This Day

I recently worked on a project where I went through a lot of old pictures. I'm posting some of the ones I found during that process intermittently.

Here is Kiernan, in front of our next-door neighbor's house. Being helpful. Pulling weeds. And helpfully preparing to re-weed the yard.


January, 2006

Picture of This Day

Yeah, this is a terrible looking picture. That's gonna happen. Oh well. I had one of the settings on my camera all wrong. This will be a theme over the next couple of days. Fact is I need a camera smarter than I am.*

Anyway, Kiernan had a playdate after school this day. I brought both him and his friend Roberto home from school and they had a blast. This was at Wendy's behest. She wants him to have more playdates, and she's right to want this. Thank goodness she's good at setting these things up, because I for sure as heck am not. I can execute the playdate proper, but I'm terrible at working out the scheduling.

Here you see Kiernan and Roberto building a structure for Bionicles using the blocks Nee-Nee gave Kiernan many years ago. Cool to see the durability of this gift here.

April 7, 2011



*Apologies to Mitch.

Picture of This Day

Assembling his Bionicles for the big showdown.


April 6, 2011

Picture For This Day

Another blast from the past. I considered trying to explain this, but I gave up on that. I figured if you know me, you'll get it.


January 2005.

Turning Gears

Today after I picked Kiernan up from school I let him play for an extra half-hour because his mom needed a little time at home. We worked on his room this weekend setting up some new shelves, and she wanted to surprise him with the finished product. So I let him play and then we headed over to Trader Joe's to get a few staples.

Once at the store I told him he could bring in a book if he wanted to. He didn't respond, so I repeated myself.

"You can bring in a book if you like. Or two."

"Nah. I just want to think."

Sometimes I look at him in the back seat and see him staring off into the distance. I'll ask if he's okay and he'll affirm that he is. He's just thinking. I find this fascinating. My little Einstein. New theories to explain our existence are percolating in there, I'm sure of it.

Fast-forward to dinner. Wendy was out for a birthday dinner with Renee, so it was a boys' night. We did a little homework and talked a bit about the school day, just enjoying each other's company. We fell into silence as Kiernan read one of his Bionicle chapter books and I wrote in my journal.  Reading is permitted if it's only two people at the dinner table.

Suddenly Kiernan burst out with a statement.

"You know that Calvin & Hobbes where Calvin says 'What's the difference between a garden slug and a two-inch long, living booger?'"

I'm surprised I don't have whiplash from the way I had jerked my head back and forth in reaction.

"What?"

He repeated the question. Keep in mind, this came out of nowhere. Out of a delightful silence in which we were reading and quietly enjoying dinner. He was not reading a Calvin & Hobbes book at the time and frankly I can't remember the last time he was reading one. It was not a gentle observation either. It came out in full-bore excitement. That is to say, loudly.

"Um..." was my next response.

"Well," he continued. "I thought of a difference! A garden slug has two eyes up here." He gestured to the back of his head. "And a booger doesn't!"

Ah. Good point, my little Einstein.

Picture For This Day

We just had the good fortune of having Gammy in town for a couple of days. She returned home last night and we're already going through a bit of withdrawal. So I'm posting a picture I love from a visit to Arizona from a few years ago as a way of coping.

We miss you Gammy!


Phoenix, AZ
December 2005

Picture of This Day

After finding his Easter basket on Sunday. First things first: read the book that was in the basket.

Happy Easter!

April 24, 2011
Gloucester Pt., VA

Picture of This Day

Gammy took Kiernan to the park during her visit today. He made some new friends, as per usual.

Here he is sticking the landing

April 2, 2011

Fool's Advice

It is April Fool's Day and I'm at Kiernan's school for after school pickup, letting Kiernan play with his friends as I am wont to do. As they are wont to do, they have just taken a break from freeze tag, or cheese-touch tag, or zombie tag--whatever they're playing--to snack from their lunch bags. At one point I hear Kiernan's voice ring out.

"There's an insect!"

All of his friends look where he is pointing.

"April Fool's!" His voice is filled with glee.

His little friend Jana, a cool little girl for whom the word "spunky" was invented, corrects him.

"No. That's a made-you-look." She pauses for a second. "You have to fool people."

I don't have a transcript for what follows, sadly, but it is basically a breakdown of what does and does not constitute an April Fool's joke. Unfortunately, I cannot say consensus is reached.

Happy April Fool's Day. The above story is not an April Fool's prank. Or a made-you-look.