My letter to you for June 22, 2013

Here is my email/letter from June 21, 2013, in case you do not receive it.

Hi Kieran,

How are you this morning? I am fine, though I miss you more than anything! I had a lot of fun with you Friday afternoon and can’t wait to get back together again!

It was great fun looking at the human body book just like we used to do when we’d stop at bookstores. You were very good at finding the little skulls. The human brain certainly was interesting, especially how it is made up of little cells that send electrical signals to one another that allows us to do all that we do. It’s amazing how it can do that, isn’t it?

I’m so glad you liked the “Star Trek” guys I picked up. I shall get some more of them for you. I think they are called “Star Trek Pods” and the set includes the starship Enterprise and other toys. I also will put together the Lego shuttlecraft for you – it has a chair in it that all of your Lego characters can sit in!

You are really starting to learn your states as well – I was impressed with how many of them you knew on the world map puzzle! I’ve attached to this email a couple of photos of when we hiked into the volcano (and here’s a link to all of the photos from our adventure; mom will have to sign in to her Facebook account for you to see them). The volcano was called the Amboy Crater, and it was off of the old Route 66! The first picture shows the volcano in the distance, and the second photo shows you inside it.

Boy, have you gotten really fast! It was difficult to keep up with you when we were playing football (I guess that’s why you won both games!). I’m so happy that you remember how to catch the ball by using both hands and pulling it in to your chest. Sorry we couldn’t do the tackle drills like you wanted, but wrestling isn’t allowed at the center. Do you have any football jerseys? I bet by now you’ve outgrown your Philip Rivers San Diego Chargers jersey.

The Dr. Seuss card game is just as challenging as trying to catch you in football, I think. I will have to practice my skipping!

Have you set up your Hot Wheels car ramp yet at your house? And if you did, is car. No. 2 still going the farthest? I think it’s funny how the numbered cars that didn’t come with the ramp all went farther than the purple car that did come with it!

And how does your stuffie penguin like his new home? What other interesting things does he say?

Well, that is all for now. I am looking forward to seeing you again in just a few weeks. We soon will be able to start seeing one another every other week rather once every four weeks, and I am very excited about that. I’ve attached some pictures of our time together on Friday as well. Be a good boy, and I will see you soon!

Love,

Dad

 

June 21, 2013

June 21, 2013, in Long Beach shirt

March 26, 2009, Amboy Crater (Volcano)

March 26, 2009, in the center of
Amboy Crater (Volcano)

Remember our car's DVD player?

You might recall that when we made all of those long trips back and forth betwen Palmdale and San Diego that you had this wonderful little DVD player to watch videos on. After we'd played some imagined game in the car for an hour or so, we'd take a break from it, and often you'd watch a DVD to pass the time on the drive.

Two DVDs in particular that I remember you liked as one about Imaginext characters who were knights and samurai and the other about penguins. The Imaginext ones came with a set of action figures we got, and the penguins came from the library.

One problem we often ran into was that we plugged the DVD player into the car's cigarette lighter, and the cord was barely long enough! If it got jerked, it would come out, and we'd have to start watching the video all over again!

I loved to hear you laugh as you listened to the DVD with its headphones!

My email to you for May 11, 2013

Here is my email sent to you on May 11, 2013, in case you did not receive it:

Dear Kieran,

How are you doing? I’m doing fine. I had so much fun with you yesterday! I can’t wait to see you again in just two weeks on the afternoon of May 24.

Thank you for introducing your stuffie penguins to me! They look like they’ve received lots of love and affection from you, and that’s cool. I remember how much you enjoyed the penguin cartoons that you would watch on the DVD player when we made those long drives from Palmdale to San Diego. It was always a great pleasure of mine to hear you laugh and giggle from the back seat!

Putting together the “Star Trek” legos was a lot of fun, too. You did a great job of following the instructions. We still have the Klingon ship and the transporter to build. There were a couple of other “Star Trek” lego models at the toy store, so I shall pick them up for the next time we get together. I think there were some other characters we can get as well. They also had Lone Ranger Lego sets, so maybe we’ll do those when we run out of “Star Trek” kits!

Is your wooden car model holding up well? If the wheels ever fall off, you just have to use some wood glue to put them back together. You did a very nice job of painting the car!

You were very good at playing War! I shall have to find some additional games for us to play. Have you ever heard of the game “Operation”? You have to pick up little pieces out of a “body,” but if you touch the body it buzzes and you don’t get the piece. Whoever has the most pieces at the end wins. I bet you would like that game. Speaking of the body, the next time we get together I also will bring the human body book with the skeleton that we can put together.

I am glad you enjoyed the book about Egypt, too. It had a lot of interesting pictures, didn’t it? One of your favorite places to go when I lived in Encinitas/San Diego was the Museum of Man, which had a whole section of Egyptian mummies and sarcophaguses as well as a great children’s area for learning about Egypt. We’d take the trolley there, and on the walk over from the trolley stop would look around in the sculpture garden and sometimes have lunch in the open air cafeteria next to it. Their gift store was a lot of fun, too – if I remember correctly, we got you some Egypt and Darwin toys, there. Anyway, the museum was one of your favorite places, and you’d even beg me to go there!

We had so much fun that we didn’t have time to do everything, like play with the Hot Wheels car, the map puzzle, or the sticker play book. Maybe next time!

Well, that is all for now. I love you and miss you like crazy. I’ll write again next Saturday and will see you on May 24!

Love,

Dad

My email to you for April 20, 2013

Here is my email to you sent April 20, 2013, in case you do not receive it.

Dear Kieran,

How are you doing today? I am doing fine, thought I miss you dearly! The good news is that we get to see one another again in just a few days – on Friday, April 26! I am looking forward to seeing you again.

How did your concert go on Sunday? I’d love to hear you sing the songs you performed that day. What were the song titles?

When we were together, you always liked to sing in the car when we were listening to Beatles CDs. Your favorite CD by far was “Please Please Me,” which was the Beatles’ first record. Among the songs on it that you’d liked were “Boys,” “Misery,” “Anna” and “A Taste of Honey.” You also liked to listen to their greatest hits from 1968-1970 and to their CD “Revolver.”

Given that you enjoyed playing the piano so much during our last visit, I shall have to see if there is a Beatles song I can teach you on the piano. They wrote many of their songs on a piano even though they later played them only with guitars and drums. Pianos and keyboards do appear in some of their songs. Their songs are quite complex, though, so maybe we should start with something simple and work our way up to them?

What kind of things are you learning about in school? You must be up to letter W, I bet! Are you still studying the oceans? We used to live very close to the Pacific Ocean and went to a lot of aquariums and beaches there. I bet you have a lot to contribute to class given all of your great experiences. Have you told your classmates about the Aquarium of the Pacific?

Speaking of ocean animals, did you know that the Minnesota Zoo has new penguin chicks? One was born on March 2 and the other on March 21. There are very furry looking! You actually can watch the penguin chicks on your computer (Just like Curious George once did!); the zoo has a webcam that shows them during the day and early evening. Just click onto the word “webcam” to see the penguin chicks! Be patient with the link, though; it takes a few seconds for the webcam to start.

I bet the penguins like our wintry weather. Having lived almost your whole life in California, I bet you’re wondering where the warm weather and sunshine is! It’s about this time of year where we used to live in the desert that the days were getting too hot to be outside; we could only go out to play in the morning and the early evening. Don’t worry, spring soon will be here!

Have you read any good books lately? I have. The book was called “My Spring Robin,” by Anne Rockwell. It tells the story of a girl who goes for a walk one day and sees a robin. She then notices other signs of spring’s arrival. What signs of spring do you think she sees? Perhaps you can find the book at the city library when your mother takes you there to check out books or for children’s activities.

That is all for now. I miss and love you very much! I will see you on Friday!

Love,

Dad

A poem about penguins for you

Read a poem today and instantly thought of you - it was Pablo Neruda's "Magellanic Penguin." Usually Neruda writes passionate love poetry (I can't wait to see what you think of it when you're older - much older, BTW!), so his penguin poem isn't particularly well known.

The reason it reminded me of you, of course, is because you really loved penguins after you turned five or so. I bought you toy figure penguins and a penguin stuffie; in fact, I think we even went to the Aquarium of the Pacific once just because I knew they'd have penguin stuffies there (Or did we get a stuffie seal pup there? I can't remember.). There also was a pegnuin video from the library that you really liked; one of the penguins was called Ringo, I think.

Anyway, here's the penguin poem:

Magellanic Penguin

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.

the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.

Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.

- Pablo Neruda