My Son is Better than I Am: Reason #478

The picture has nothing to do with this post, I just stumbled across it a few minutes ago and it made me laugh so I decided to post it. My brother Mason took it during our visit to Virginia last August. All of our digital pictures cycle through as widgets and screensavers and this one popped up today as I was tinkering with the wireless router during Kiernan's nap.

This post is just a short one about wearing clothes.

Last week Wendy was away on a trip to a conference in Kentucky. I was getting Kiernan ready for bed. We were at the point in our nighttime ritual where he gets to choose his sleepy clothes for the night. He was being difficult, albeit in an entirely charming way: after his bath he wanted to wear his towel--and only his towel--to go jumping on our bed. When he wears one of his bath towels (for those of you without children, they make little towels for kids that have hoods sewn into them to keep their little heads warm) nowadays he says he is a sea turtle. Clearly one of the characteristics of the species is post-bath bed jumping.

As cute as he was, however, I was feeling rather harried so I just ducked into his room and grabbed the sleepy clothes myself. I had to hurry because I didn't want him to beat me to our bedroom and start jumping on the bed without me there. [NOTE TO ALL OF YOU OUT THERE WHO KNOW BETTER: I realize we shouldn't let him jump the bed. I realize we should have never let him start jumping on the bed in the first place. But when he started doing it, well, it was just so precious. So much fun. It seemed like a rite of passage. Now that he's almost two and a half and can jump so forcefully that he could really hurt himself, it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.]

As I opened his pajama drawer I realized I had forgotten to move his laundry from the washer to the drier that afternoon. The clock ticking, I shrugged and grabbed a dinosaur top and and a pair of bottoms that had basketballs all over them. They were both kind of blue, but the similarity ended there. They were not even remotely similar fabrics. But I figured, "Eh...what the heck. Wendy's not home. What's the harm?"

I reached our bedroom just as he scrambled onto the bed. I let him jump for awhile, standing at the end of the bed like a goalie in case he should jump to close to the edge. (I didn't get on the bed with him because, of late, he has taken to saying, "I need space!" if you get on the bed while he is trying to jump on it.)

After a bit I put his diaper on him and then the basketball pajama bottoms. I grabbed the dinosaur top and was about to slip it over his head when he exclaimed, "They don't match!"

I was surprised, but I forged ahead. "I know. That's okay." I tried again.

"THEY DON'T MATCH!" This time he was a mite more forceful, and I realized that I simply wasn't going to get away with it.

I guess he's tired of people being able to tell when his Daddy has dressed him in the morning. Oh well, at least one of us will be a snappy dresser.

The Boys of Sunset

As I mentioned in the previous post, the first thing Kiernan and I did after checking into our place in San Clemente was head across the street to the beach. Actually, that's not entirely true. First we tried to get Kiernan to take nap. He did not go to sleep. I guess I can't blame him.

In order to give Mommy a couple hours to get some grading done, we boys decided to hit the beach ourselves. It was late in the afternoon, so we didn't bother changing into our swim suits or anything. I just grabbed the camera and we headed across the street.

After dropping our shoes off underneath the closed lifeguard stand, we headed down the beach. Kiernan just took off, following the tracks that one of the jeeps that the lifeguards use had made in the sand. Every now and then he would leave the track to go and chase some birds.
This would be a recurring activity for this trip.

We spent some time exploring the beach, checking out the shells and the huge mounds of seaweed that had washed up on the shore ("What's that, Daddy? What's that, Daddy?"). After awhile Kiernan started back the way we had come. We ran into another father and son, and older version of ourselves, playing one of those paddle ball games people play at the beach. The man stopped to hand his paddle to Kiernan and I helped him hit the ball back to the man's son. Then I said, "C'mon, Little Man, let's go." The guy with the paddle laughed. "That's what I still call him," he said, indicating his own boy, who was probably around twelve. "Little man."

I said, "Yeah. I'm not in any hurry for that to stop."

"You and me both," he replied.

Kiernan and I continued back toward the pier, which was still a good ways in the distance. Kiernan said, "I want to go play with those boys." I squinted. I couldn't tell what he was talking about, but we pressed on. When we were almost to the pier Kiernan sprinted ahead to a little boy who was lying down in the sand, tying long thin strands of seaweed into a rope. He looked up, saw Kiernan, and said, "Hi!" I would later find out from his mother that he was six years old.

He popped up to his feet, gathered his seaweed rope, and said, "Come on!" Kiernan followed him to a big pile of seaweed on the other side of where his family was beached and the two boys set about the task of untangling seaweed.

I stayed close, but out of earshot, letting the two boys play. It was so cool seeing Kiernan just dive right in and start playing with another kid without any prompting or help from me. The only time I had to intervene was when Kiernan started to throw sand. The other boy looked past him at me, as if to say, "Are you going to handle this?" I came over and cautioned Kiernan to stop and that was that.

A little while later Kiernan took off for the pier. The little boy kept working at his seaweed rope task, so I followed Kiernan. Once under the pier Kiernan turned, saw me, and said, "I want Andrew to follow me." Without any solitication from me he had introduced himself to this little boy, found out his name, and remembered it. This is a simple task, but it struck me as a giant step.

Life is full of these kinds of moments these days. Things that seem so simple, but are nevertheless fascinating little achievements for a toddler.

Kiernan went back and played with Andrew some more. Everything Andrew did--flopping on his back to do a sand angel, trying to do a back roll in the sand, making weird little trenches with his head--Kiernan wanted to try. I was happy to sit at a distance and let him play along, at least until Andrew and his older brother ran over to the aforementioned closed lifeguard stand, climbed the steps, and jumped off.

I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.

Walking Distance

At the beginning of April we took a little family vacation. This picture is from the San Clemente portion of our trip, which was the second part of the vacation. The first part took place over a weekend in San Diego, where Wendy was slated to give a presentation to a conference. After all, it wouldn't be a vacation unless you had some work to do on the trip.

San Diego was good. We got to visit Seaworld, thanks to my dad and stepmom and brother, and did a little touring of the city. I'll post some pictures from that part of the trip as well, and talk about it more then.

I just wanted to get off the schneid and start posting again. So I decided to go with this picture of Kiernan on the beach in front of the San Clemente pier.

San Clemente is this great little seaside town just south of Los Angeles. Wendy and I stayed there a few years ago; ever since we have both dreamed of going back. A friend back then suggested a hotel/resort that was right down near the beach and we had a great time. I held onto the brochure from the place--because I save everything--and dug it out for this trip. I'm so glad I did. The place we stayed, The Sea Horse Resort, was great for us. It was not the most fancy place in the world, which is to say the amenities were few. But when you're staying across the street from the ocean, with a view of the pier, and can open the sliding glass door and hear the waves crashing all night long, who needs amenities?

We had a great time down in San Clemente doing what I like to do best on vacations: nothing. We got there and Kiernan and I almost immediately went across the street to play on the beach. There was a crepe place just a few steps down the sidewalk from where we were staying. We ate breakfast there all three mornings we were in San Clemente, both because Wendy is nuts about crepes and because the coffee at the place was excellent. I've never really understood the whole crepe thing, though Wendy makes a mean crepe. To me it's like eating whatever you're eating on a thing that would like to be a tortilla but hasn't quite made it and instead tastes like soggy, slightly eggy, paper. But the crepes at this place were good, and the coffee kept me coming back. And one morning there I had some of the best brie I've ever had in my life.

Plus it was within walking distance of our hotel and the beach. That's hard to beat.

All in all the dining was pretty good in San Clemente due in no small part to the fact that we walked to almost every meal. There was a fish restaurant across the street at the pier. We had appetizers there the first night (a great cajun ahi tuna for me) and a great dinner the last night (a fantastic wild striped sea bass for me). The only dinner that disappointed was at a Swiss/German place called The Swiss Chalet. I had remembered eating there during our previous visit, years ago, and thought it might be a nice place to try again. The food was actually pretty good, but it took forever to get to us. Seriously, the salads did not go down until forty-five minutes after we ordered them, and we didn't order appetizers. There was a time when I would have considered this type of wait a "leisurely meal"...that was the time before I had a two-year 0ld. Considering how long it took, Kiernan was remarkably well-behaved though. He also helped us make friends with the people sitting near us, most notably the table of four great-grandmothers. One of them was a neighbor of the chef/owner of the restaurant who was put off by the wait for food as well. So it wasn't just us. She told us the place hadn't been the same since the wife stopped working there, and that sounded just ominous enough that I didn't ask her to elaborate.

Good food though. Not that German food is that hard to do. That's the only thing that puts me off about going to a German place. Most of the stuff is so easy I can do it myself at home, and when I go out I want to get stuff I don't necessarily know how to do myself. Many German restaurants in America are full of simple things, like sausages and pork chops and little else. Maybe the odd rolled meat dish. A couple of schnitzels. The menus are often exceedingly short. I did like the food in Germany when we went a couple years ago, but I was crazy for the food of Switzerland, mainly because in my memory we had cheese fondue at every meal (which is probably why I came back to the states weighing about fifteen pounds more than I did when we left). This place in San Clemente had cheese fondue, but you could only have it if two people were ordering it, and Wendy doesn't eat cheese.

Why Swiss places cannot figure out how to make a batch of cheese fondue for one person is completely beyond me. Oh well.

I'll throw one last picture onto this post. This is a picture of the three of us in front of the crepe place on our final morning in San Clemente.