Picture of This Day

Last night Kiernan requested I set out an outfit for him to wear to summer school today. It was a simple outfit, blue sweats and a cool blue Phineas & Ferb t-shirt. This morning he decided he wanted to go with a different look.


"I wanna be in camoflage so Nicholas doesn't see me this time!"


July 26, 2010

Picture of This Day

I just told Kiernan that Mommy was on the way home from the airport, with Gammy.


June 22, 2010

Raindrops on Roses and Sleep

I learned something new about myself on this fine Father's Day.


In school last week Kiernan and his classmates worked on special message sheets for Dads. The above sheet was his work, for me, obviously. See if you can spot the new thing I learned about myself.

Yesterday was a great Father's Day, with one major exception. Wendy had to go out of town early in the morning, so the whole family was not together. But Kiernan was absolutely amazing to me all day long. Not that he's usually difficult. He's quite a good kid. On Father's Day, however, he was another level of cool. Opening doors for me and being extra careful not to ask for his way or to whine or sulk when he didn't get his way. It was really neat watching him think through this. A few times I could literally see him stop himself from reacting a certain way, smile, and then go about his business.

We got up and immediately headed out for the day as I was performing in a show at eleven. The show was Legends of King Arthur, which I've posted about here before and which I perform at some point most every year. Usually I will beg off the gig if Wendy is going to be out of town, but for some reason we got our wires crossed and I ended up taking the work. I'm glad I did, because we had a great time. One of our wonderful sitters, Nicole, met us up at the theatre as I had to rehearse for two hours before the show, and then do the show. So she entertained Kiernan during that time and sat with him during the show.

He used to be fairly reserved about volunteering to be in my Creative PlayGround shows (Creative PlayGround is the name of the theatre company). Almost all of our shows are performed in the round with the audience seated on the stage with us. Opportunities for the kids to be involved abound. Last year Kiernan volunteered to be part of the dragon tail--Max the Dragon is one of the characters I play in the show--and he loved it so much he let me know beforehand he'd be volunteering for this again. So...cool.

However, the audience turned out to be of moderately small size and were fairly shy, so Kiernan ended up volunteering for two other parts in the show as well. He just jumped right in and contributed. I was so proud. Great Father's Day present.

Nicole has promised to email me some pictures from the day. She took pictures with her camera and took some video with our little Flip video camera. When I get the pictures from her I'll post them, and once I get the video off the Flip I'll throw some of that up on here too. I'll send out updates when I do this.

In the meantime, here's another picture from the day. This is from dinner, and really this moment made me feel like the luckiest Dad in the world.

As we set the table for dinner, Kiernan said, "Dad, since it's Father's Day, you get to choose what we do during dinner."

I thought for a moment and said, "Well, then I choose writing in my journal while you read." I needed to transcribe a bunch of film notes for a podcast I do Sunday nights, and I figured dinner time outside on this lovely day would be a good time to get a start on that. [We have a family rule that if only one parent is at dinner with Kiernan, reading is allowed at the table.]

Kiernan had other ideas. "Cool!" He ran off to his room to get a book.

Then he proceeded to spend the entire meal reading this book out loud to me. I didn't get to transcribe my notes...and I couldn't have cared less. I just sat there, eating my salad and getting read to by my awesome, awesome boy. The picture above is him doing just that. The book: Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express.

So great.

Let Me Take You Down...

While our primary purpose for visiting Virginia this spring was to celebrate the graduations of my awesome sister Hope and my stellar brother Mason, we did get to indulge in some other experiences. We spent part of the week with Pap-Pap and Sandi, and on one of those days we got to go strawberry picking. Nobody tells you this going in, but one of the great things about having a Sandi who is a kindergarten teacher is that you get to go on the odd "field trip" during visits. [I put field trip in quotes because it wasn't really a "field trip" per se. It was an activity that a bunch of people who have kids in Sandi's class happened to show up at with their kids. Quite by coincidence. Really.]

As we have in past years, we took the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry over to Surry and went to the College Run Farms (Sandi will have to confirm the name of the farm for me). The other time we went, it was just family. That was cool. This time there were other kids. This was far cooler, especially for the five-year old who had been stuck on a plane with me for several hours.

We met the other parents at the Piggly Wiggly, or some such wonderfully named Virginia convenience store, and then proceeded to convoy to the ferry. As we just missed the outgoing boat, we turned off our cars and let the kids pile and and play for a bit. Kiernan had many pressing Gormiti questions to ask of the boys. Gormiti is the toy collection he was obsessing over at that time, and if you don't know what it is, consider yourself lucky and move on (or turn to Google).

So the boys all looked over the railing at the water and made various references to bodily functions, and the girls all joined hands in a circle and jumped up and down and did a cute little dance. And no...I'm not making that up.

Eventually the next ferry came and we all drove onto it. Once the boat was away from its moorings the kids clambered out of the cars and got together to create a ruckus, which is to be expected I suppose.

To his credit, Kiernan did stand still long enough for me to get at least one okay ferry picture. I chose to post this one instead, however, since it shows the other ferry boat in the background and that makes me feel nifty.Once the ferry docked on the Surry side of the world we drove the couple of miles out to the farm, gathered our baskets and hit the strawberry field. Kiernan got right to work, which consisted mainly of picking strawberries, putting them in his mouth, and sprinting with his new friends up and down the rows. Beautiful. Just beautiful.


Actually, to be fair, Kiernan did contribute some to our strawberry haul. He hung with me for a bit and helped fill our basket. Aided by his main new friend for this trip, Eben (again, Sandi will have to confirm/correct this name). Eben was very helpful in educating Kiernan in the finer points of picking berries. According to him, you wanted berries that were a nice deep red. But not too dark. "If they're too dark," Eben warned gravely, "They are evil." He said this last word somberly at first, but as he continued to give this advice the word got more and more portentous, and the 'e' got more and more drawn out, so that by the end of the picking it was, "Don't pick the dark ones. They are eeeeeeeeeevil!"

Hold on a second. You know what? I just posted that picture there on the left, and it reminds me of something. Be right back...

...Yep. There it is. I was hoping I could get that. Over there to the right is the picture that one above and to the left called to mind. Another fruit picking adventure. This one was blueberries, in 2006. Great googaly moogaly...where does the time go.

After all the baskets were full we all headed over to the farm's shop to pay for our bounty and get some ice cream. I know, I know. We've just filled our baskets--and some of us our bellies--with sweet sweet strawberries and we're rewarding ourselves with ice cream. Allow me to quote one of my favorite philosophers in my defense: There is never a wrong time for ice cream.

The ice cream at this farm is just fantastic. Simple and good. My only gripe was that I was hankering for vanilla and they were out of vanilla. What? Come again? You're out of vanilla? Bizarre. But okay, because the strawberry was delicious.

Ice cream polished off we headed back to the cars and the ferry. Again on the ferry the boys got out to play, climbing up onto Eben's family's pickup truck from which they could wrestle and overlook their watery kingdom.

Remember what I said above about the girls gathering in a cute little circle, joining hands, and jumping around and dancing happily? The boys? Not so much.


Upon reaching land the boys engaged in a tearful farewell, as new BFF's are wont to do. We boarded our cars and headed for home. As we drove, Kiernan contemplated the address of his new friend Eben, whose father approached me about the boys becoming pen pals. I think it's a great idea.

Great day.

Picture For This Day

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Virginia for the graduations of my sister and my brother. I posted a bit about the excellent sister portion of our trip (including a visit with Nana), but I have yet to post about the brother portion, which was also great.

I'll try to rectify that in the coming days, in honor of my brother's upcoming birthday.

Here's a couple pics to kick this off. Kiernan down at the beach with his Pap-Pap and Uncle Mason. Working on a dam.


May 13, 2010
Gloucester Pt., VA

Death to Ivy

We just got to spend a few days with Nana and Pop thanks to Hope's graduation from law school. This was such a great time, because it's so great to be around all of them, and it's so good to be back in Virginia. Flying in over all that green after the plane change in Philadelphia...it just does something to me. It's calming.

Then there's the mosquitoes.

For the most part it's great though. The quality time with family truly rocks, as does the quality time with family dogs. One of the truly cool things about this trip has been watching Kiernan totally get into hanging out with Nana and Pop's dogs, Holmes and Rapha. Especially Holmes, the more indoor of the two dogs. Holmes is an extremely affectionate Shepherd/Rottweiller/Whatever mix. In the past Kiernan has showed trepidation around dogs. This visit seems to have broken him of this. The first thing he wanted to do each morning was go to the door and let Holmes in the house; he would then spend the day lavishing attention upon and playing with the dog. This was a great thing to see.

Monday, once I eventually got up, we (me, Nana, Kiernan, and Holmes) went for a walk in the old neighborhood. This did me a lot of good, being out in green Virginia. There's a weight to the woods here that feels different than California. Something Wendy described as beautiful when we were driving down to Mom's house. Kiernan looked out the car window and said, simply, "I think it's creepy."

Different strokes, as they say.

As we started down Mom's long driveway for our walk, she spoke of her gardening plans. She told Kiernan that she wanted to do some planting with him, since they'd had fun gardening the last time he visited, but first they would have to kill a bunch of ivy.

"Kill ivy," he repeated.

Seemed innocuous at the time, but these two words would become something of a mantra in the days to come. Every time we left the house Kiernan would utter these words either alone or as some part of a request. What can I say, he's into super hero battles right now. And my mom clearly presented ivy as a nemesis to be vanquished.

This morning the two of them got around to putting the hurt on some of the driveway ivy, so our story has a happy ending. What's happier is that they followed up the destruction by planting some new plants, so Kiernan sees that there is a flip-side to the world-rending power that gardeners wield. Thanks to Nana he may still be a force for good in this world.

After planting and watering the new plants the three of us all got to go out on the creek in the kayaks. Kiernan sat with me in the red kayak and did his best not to turn the thing over--sort of--while Mom took the blue kayak and acted as tour guide. We loved this part of the day, and hope to do that again for even longer next time we visit.

Picture For This Day

My sister Hope graduated law school on Saturday. I took this right before. We were all pretty excited.


Virginia Beach, VA
Saturday, May 8, 2010

Picture of This Day

Outside Ken Matthews' Garden Center with my boy. Inside we would see the biggest Koi I have ever seen in my life. It may have been a manatee, actually.


Yorktown, VA
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

[Picture taken by my mom.]

Observe and Report

Last Tuesday was a special day for Kindergarten: field trip to the California Science Center. As with the other two field trips this year--pumpkin patch and zoo--I elected to be a volunteer driver. They don't do buses for field trips around here.

It was a wonderful day, if way too short. We got down to the Science Center late, but that was to be expected. Los Angeles freeways at nine in the morning...what are you gonna do? The kids played for awhile in the area in front of the box office while we waited for four classes worth of kindergartners and their teachers, conveyed in various vehicles, to arrive. Then we headed upstairs to check out the new Eco-Systems section of the museum.
We didn't have time to explore much, but it was pretty neat just the same. The little group of kids we were with all went to look at a water/ocean oriented exhibit. They got to touch some starfish and watch the way tidal movement affects sea creatures and plants. Kiernan caught a glimpse of a small shark and a ray moving along the bottom of the tank.

Here's our little group (I will provide names as I get permission from parents):


After lunch outside, the kids all headed over to another building for their lab time. I thought we had missed this, as we had missed our initial morning appointment because of the aforementioned traffic. As it turned out, the teachers had called while in traffic and rescheduled our lab time for the afternoon. Yes...our teachers rock.

Our afternoon time was spent in this interesting indoor/outdoor lab area where the kids were able to observe some creatures in an environment similar to nature. It was pretty neat, although sadly not very challenging. Note to museum tour instructors: if you begin your talk with a group of five/six-year olds by saying, "The three parts of an insect are--" and the kids all call out, in unison, "Head! Thorax! Abdomen!" And they do this before you can even begin to say the words. Don't spend the next twenty minutes doing a spiel on these things. Here's a hint: THEY ALREADY KNOW THAT.

You may have guessed that this was a somewhat frustrating part of the afternoon. Mainly for a few of the parents and the teachers, because the museum instructor was not prepared to adjust to the kids. Oh well. We still had a great time, and Kiernan and his lab team had fun interacting with ladybugs. His favorite insect...and mine.

They also got to see a really cool turtle. She's over there on the right. Okay, I'll be honest with you. If you stick your finger out, she'll probably bite it. This does not mean she doesn't like you. She wants to be your friend. Trust me. She just thought your finger was a worm. Or something.

Overall the trip was a success. We returned to school with all children intact. Even more surprising is the fact that we returned without losing any adults to sharks, or nervous breakdowns. What's best is that I can't wait to go back to the Science Center. There's so much more to see. We were down there last fall to see the Natural History Museum, which is in the same little area. This was during Kiernan's dinosaur phase--I'm still in mourning that the dinosaur phase has passed--and while we stopped by the Science Center for lunch, we didn't really check it out. Now that I've gotten a glimpse of it, I definitely want to take him there again. Much more to explore. And I'm grateful for that.

In the meantime...how about one more picture of my favorite insect. On my favorite boy.

Another Picture for This Day

A little preview before the Science Center post:


I'm working on a post about last week's trip to the California Science Center. This pic doesn't fit into the post, but I wanted to put it up anyway. I just love the way he looks. So thoughtful. What you can't see in the picture is the ladybug that's crawling around his hand and up his arm.

Stay tuned for a more complete explanation.