G-I-N-S-B-U-R-G Spells "Dog"

Kiernan read his first word the other day!

Allow me to set the table.

The kid is just nuts about letters. He loves numbers too, but he is absolutely nuts about his letters. He's got the magnetic ones that he plays with on the refrigerator, or on various sheet pans around the house (below is a picture of him doing that with his Pap-Pap and his Uncle Mason at their house in January). He's got a couple sets of foam letters too, some big, uppercase ones that pop out of foam squares that you can link together to form a mat. He also has some smaller ones that are really for the bathtub, as they can stick to the tile walls, but he insists on carting them all over the house and playing with them.

A couple of months ago Kiernan got interested in spelling out every word he saw. In fact, one day in particular, on our way to the airport, he got upset with me because I wouldn't keep the car still enough for him to spell out the signs we were passing. A little while after that Wendy started teaching him how to sound out the letters, and shortly after that he started to sound them out for himself, trying to put together words. He would put a line of letters up on the fridge, sound out the letters one by one--correctly--then make up a totally unrelated word like "blibberflimp" or something.

This seemed totally natural to me until we were at school one day and one of the teachers was playing with him, with some foam letters there. I was hanging back, letting him have some space. She turned to me, sitting a bit away from them, her eyes wide, and said, "He's sounding out the letters." I just shrugged. I mean, I've been able to sound out letters for years. Nobody ever makes a fuss.

At dinner a short while later he tried sounding out some of the words on one of the cool placemats his Aunt Amy made for him. She makes these collage placemats for him sometimes for birthday gifts and he just loves them. One of them has the word "Ginsburg" on it, written vertically. For some reason Wendy's family says the word "Ginsburg" at the start of every meal. Apparently it's German for "We don't believe in saying the blessing"...or something like that. They've explained what it actually means about fifty-three times to me, but I think I was concentrating on saying something pithy about the wine all those times.

So anyway, Kiernan spelled out the word "Ginsburg" on his placemat. He did this very quickly, and Wendy and I looked at each other, holding our breath. Was he going to read this word? Was this the moment?

He then said, "Dog!" and started laughing maniacally.

So...no.

But then on this last Saturday, Kiernan's Née-Née was over at the house to see him. Wendy broke out the finger paints and she, Renée, and Kiernan sat around making hand prints on butcher paper. I sat at the dining room table, writing in my journal. On a whim Wendy painted the following letters on the paper: C-A-T.

Kiernan moved around to her side of the paper, pointed at the letters, sounded them out without prompting, and said, "Cat."

Our three mouths simultaneously fell open. He read a word! Woo-Hoo! Wendy spelled out a few more three-letter words, and he carefully sounded out and read them all. It was a watershed moment, and I'm so pleased we were all there to see it.

I'm glad he picked the word "cat" as the first thing he's really read. It's a good word, and we have a cat. Plus, I think he was genuinely surprised with how the word ended.

Of course, by the time I got the video camera out to record the moment for posterity Kiernan had decided that every word we spelled out was "Guinea pig", so I don't think we have to worry about him getting ahead of himself.

Mom Possible

Hello everyone, from this side of 2007. Now that all of our holiday stuff, our family traveling, and my Oscar ballots are in the mail, I can get back to my routines. Back to work on the final rewrite of my latest novel. Back to submitting for acting jobs. And back to updating The Creeping Kid. It is easy to see which of these is the most important.

Before I get into catching you all up on Kiernan's doings during the holidays and in the early new year, I must first do a Vocabulary Update.

As many of you know, Kiernan turned two years old on November 29--Holy Cow! As I look at the previous post it appears I have not updated this since well before that on November 16...oof. Sorry about that. At any rate, he is developing by leaps and bounds, and the way his vocabulary is developing is a constant source of amazement to us both. Not just his vocabulary, though. I don't just mean he's using big words, though he is. I mean the way he processes concepts and expresses them. From the simple--"I want juice instead of milk!"--to the more complex--"Sit down on the blanket, Daddy...it's more comfortable."--he is just exploding in his ability to convey what he wants, thinks, and feels.

The other night at dinner Wendy did something that was silly. I can't remember what it was. What I do remember is that I said, to Kiernan, "Boy, your mom's a piece of work."

Without skipping a beat he replied, "She's impossible!"

I laughed for about half an hour.

He may be a momma's boy now, and for the foreseeable future. He's got her looks (thank goodness), her smarts (ditto), and based on his persistence in getting me to do just about anything he wants, her drive...but I think we all know who he's getting his sense of humor from.

I just hope he forgives me for ending that last sentence with a preposition.

Pictures: The top picture is him at the home of Gammy and Grance, playing with his activity/craft table. The second picture is him preparing for said trip. It's a companion picture to an earlier one of him hanging out in a suitcase (from June 2005, which I will include here as a blast from the past):

Chair Enough

Wendy's folks were in town for her sister JoAnne's baby shower. Sadly Kiernan did not get any attention for the whole weekend.

Picass-Oh!

I may be the only one who finds this interesting and cool, but Kiernan can draw circles now. Circles. O's. Balls. Whatever. He can draw a circle.

He is motivated to do this because he got tired of getting us to draw baseballs and basketballs for him. Now he can draw them himself. Sort of. He draws a circle and makes some marks inside of it that are supposed to be the seams. Sometimes instead of a ball he will draw a picture of one of us. It looks like the same picture, unless he's making some kind of comment about my head. Recently the O's (circles, whatever) have become pictures of the sun. His sun pictures are really very good.

Also, no matter what anybody draws--including him--more often than not he will come along and draw a line coming off of it and declare that, henceforth, it is a balloon. You may think you just drew a cat. Nope. What you drew was a cat balloon.

Pumpkin Patch Family

A Monkey's Godfather

Kiernan and his godfather, Daniel. Darren--Kiernan's other godfather--was kind enough to loan him to us for the week so he could build both of our costumes.

Oh, and here's another shot of those cool, cool monkey feet:

And what the heck, one more shot of trick-or-treating. I love the way Kiernan looks carrying his little Jack-o-Lantern as he follows Sam to the next door.

The Curious Incident of the Monkey in the Nighttime

Here's a couple of pictures from Kiernan's second Halloween. As many of you may remember, Kiernan's godfather Daniel is a costume artist. He takes it upon himself to create Kiernan's Halloween costumes, which is really quite cool. This year he created a Curious George costume for Kiernan.


I am to blame for the almost universal poor quality of these pictures. I have no excuse, except to say that I may have been distracted by the enormous yellow hat I had been wearing all day. This is a cute shot, but I have not fixed the eyes yet. I think I took this one right before we went out trick-or-treating. I like this shot because it shows the very cool monkey feet that Daniel made for the costume.

As was the case last year, Kiernan's companion for trick-or-treating was his friend Sam. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Sam was a train for Halloween. From what I understand he is pretty much obsessed with trains, so he went as Thomas the Tank Engine and his mother, Heather, went as an engineer. Why some people feel the need to dress up as part of a theme with their child is beyond me...but whatever.

The boys were a great trick-or-treating team. It was funny to contrast this year with last year, because this time they would just march right up to the door, knock, and say "Trick or Treat!" Kiernan would also do the "smell my feet" chant at some of the houses. I should note that his mother taught him that. I'm very proud of both of them.


I've been trying to avoid this, but I suppose I should include a picture of all three of us.

In case it's not clear from the photo, I am the Man in the Yellow Hat from the Curious George books, and Wendy is a tree. She figured she would spend a significant part of the time while Kiernan was in costume holding him, so she decided to be Momma Tree. I have to say, she makes a darn cute tree. My costume is another of Daniel's brilliant creations. It is hard to get a toddler to carry around props that enhance his costume, so Daniel made a walking prop for him...me! This worked like a charm. We went to school that morning wearing our costumes and the kids just went nuts when they saw us.

Incidentally, I should note that if it seems that Kiernan is less than his normal, ebullient self in these pictures, that is because he was coming down with what would become a pretty good cold. At the time we just thought he was tired from what had been a very full day, even before trick-or-treating. So if he looks a little blank in these pictures, that's why.

This last picture is of Kiernan eating a tortilla after trick-or-treating. I'm including it just because I think he looks so adorable in that costume. I'm also including it because during our walk around the neighborhood we ran into a lot of other trick-0r-treaters. One pair of women stopped us in a driveway, laughed, pointed at Kiernan and said, "Curious Jorge!" They also pointed at me and said some things that I didn't quite catch since basically the word "Jorge" is the extent of my knowledge of Spanish. It's possible they said the word "queso" when they pointed to me, but I can't be sure.

I felt it was fitting to post a picture of our Curious Jorge eating a tortilla on Halloween. This is, after all, Southern California.

Blogga Culpa

First off...apologies. I've been bogged down with a couple of projects, and thus have been neglecting my blogging duties. Furthermore, I apologize but I won't be writing a whole lot for the next couple of entries. I just can't right now. I'll go into why another time, or when I talk to you individually.

Skirting the specifics of the issue for now, suffice to say I got some news yesterday that made me realize I really needed to post some pictures of Kiernan, at the very least. You all need to see more of Kiernan. He is amazing, just amazing, and I need to share that with you all more often. Life is precious and fleeting...and it moves so fast.

So...enjoy the pictures to come. I'll put in what commentary I can, provided I can get my mind to work through all of this and do so.

Love to you all.
Oh, and here's a picture of Kiernan wearing my shoes.

Basket Case

This was another of those moments when I had to leave Kiernan alone for a couple seconds. It was right after a diaper change, and I was disposing of the evidence. In those scant seconds, he took off across the room and climbed into the laundry basket.

I'm ready for my fabric softener, Mr. DeMille.

Book Smarts

After dinner things can get difficult. Especially if only one of us parents is at home. Cleaning up from dinner and getting Kiernan ready for bed is a dizzying process. He is so quick now; he can disappear in a moment. And he's too curious and good at climbing to let him get out of our sight for too long. I think he understands our trepidation in this regard, for often as soon as he does get out of sight, he goes silent, like a submarine. I wish there was some kind of parental sonar available for moments like that.

The other night I had to get the bath ready after dinner on a night when Wendy has to teach late. Kiernan had just been released from his seat at the dinner table and was ready to play. (The basic fact any parent of a toddler knows is that as the toddler gets more tired, he gets more active, more wound up. Meanwhile his parents are asleep on their feet.)

I sprinted into the bathroom to start the bath process, figuring I would do all the little tasks--rinsing out the tub, putting down fresh towels, getting a clean diaper and pajamas for afterward--in bursts. I'd run into the bathroom, get his bath toys out, then run back into the family room to make sure Kiernan had not climbed up onto the window sill. Then I'd dash back in, rinse the tub, and hurry back out to make sure he wasn't drawing on the walls. Every second Kiernan is out of my sight when we're alone is like the speed round on some game show. A huge digital timer pops up in my mind and wackily ominous music plays in my ears. I know I'd better get back out to him before that timer reaches thirty seconds or I'll be gonged out as a parent.

On this night, Kiernan made my job easy. He climbed up onto the reading chair and opened a book. He's been doing this more and more lately. Most of the time he still wants us to read to him, but time to time, especially when we are about another task, he will go and open a book and page through it himself. These are wonderful moments, so wonderful that they can become counterproductive. There are times I'm trying to do the dishes and he will just be sitting in his room, reading a book. All I want to do is watch him from outside the room, spy on his little moment of beautiful independence.

He's such a clever little guy. A budding intellectual, I'm sure of it.

Oh...I suppose I should mention what happened right after this picture. As I prepared to fill the tub, he followed me into the bathroom and tossed the book he had been reading into the tub.

Intellectual. Indeed.