Picture of This Day

Kiernan insisted I take a picture of him with his Planet Heroes tonight. This happened after he saw the picture I have on the desktop of my little laptop, a picture of him with his Planet Heroes at Christmastime. He looked at the picture and noticed that Commander Sun and Rings and Tune were not in the picture, and he chastised me for having taken it. It was a great conversation in its temporal surreality.

Kiernan: Where are Commander Sun and Rings?

Me: You didn't have them yet.

Kiernan: Then why did you take the picture?

After some back and forth he demanded I take a new picture today. Clearly inclusion is important to this boy. So I he assembled the Planet Heroes and I took a few shots, and this one, with our cat Cali stepping into the shot, was the one that amused him the most.

February 7, 2009

Planetary Considerations

The above image is from a t-shirt I have been wanting to get for Kiernan for some time now. I almost got it for myself, but I really wanted to get it for the both of us, but the place selling them didn't have it in a kid's size so I passed on it. Still, I love the shirt.

The other day Kiernan and I were playing with his Planet Heroes action figures. Big surprise. Nowadays this takes up a healthy percentage of our day. We do the voices and goof around with the figures and have races and contests and conversations. He does not own all of the Planet Heroes yet, but curiously this does not stop him from insisting that we do all of their voices and have conversations with all of them.

On the day in question we were talking to Shiver, the Planet Hero associated with Pluto. According to a blog I read about the development of the Planet Heroes, Shiver had already been created when the decision to de-planetize Pluto came down the pike. Rather than scrap Shiver, they decided to make planethood Shiver's personal issue. His tag line became, "I am so a real planet!"

So whenever I have to do Shiver's voice, I start with that line.

On this day in particular, Kiernan got annoyed with Shiver insisting he was a real planet, and Shiver and Kiernan got into a debate about it. After a couple of back and forths Kiernan said the following...

"It is considered a Dwarf Planet, but I can consider it a real planet if you insist me to."

I think I will just make a t-shirt out of that statement, now that I think of it.

The Impressionist

Kiernan gave me a little lesson in art today.

We were goofing around after his nap, reading my new Calvin and Hobbes book (a gift from my sister Hope). After many pages of this book, The Days Are Just Packed, I shifted us to a new activity, suggesting we draw on Kiernan's Doodle Pro while we played with his Planet Heroes figures. The Doodle Pro--pictured above--is this great drawing board that you write on with a magnetic stylus, and which you can wipe clean with the flip of a lever. It's great.

So we got to work playing with the Planet Heroes, and out of nowhere I decided to draw one of them. Now let me make one thing clear...I cannot draw. Really, I'm terrible. I have always wanted to be able to draw. Oh well. That's okay. I can do other stuff. I can, however, copy things. And if have one of Kiernan's Planet Heroes close by, I can make an adequate copy-drawing of it. It looks demented and sad, but it looks okay. And by 'okay', I mean Kiernan can identify which character I'm attempting to draw.

So I tried draw the Planet Hero Gustus. He's the one from the planet Jupiter, and one of Kiernan's newest acquisitions. I did a pretty good job, with help from Kiernan. We had a fun time doing it.

After that, Kiernan asked me to draw another of his Planet Heroes. I asked him to draw something instead. He demured. I asked again, this time in the voice of Yuri, the Planet Hero of the planet Uranus (a voice that is a combination of Borat and Dracula), and this time he took the little Doodle Pro magnetic stylus and set to work drawing.

He started drawing the Planet Heroes, but instead of trying to draw them literally, as I do, he just drew them as his memory dictated he should. That is to say, when I try to draw Gustus, I take the Gustus figure and put it next to the Doodle Pro and try to copy it line for line. When Kiernan draws Gustus, he just draws a figure then adds flourishes that suggest what Gustus is about. He instinctively picks out a characteristic and highlights that characteristic, and doesn't really worry about nailing down all the details. And the cool thing is, even if I don't know what he's going for, his drawing has enough of the essence that I get it. He draws an impression of what that figure is, and that communicates it.

He inherently gets how to communicate through his drawings, something I have never really gotten.

Cool.

[Picture Note: Kiernan draws a picture of the planets. The Planet Heroes look on as he does so. From Left to Right they are, Gustus from Jupiter, Digger from Mars, Yuri from Uranus, Ace from Earth, Zip from Mercury, and Dazzle from Venus.]