Dad's favorite TV show - 'Star Trek'

Spent a little time talking with your Grandma today (Who can't wait to see you by the way - she took care of you every day for several months when you were a baby and your mother stayed with them.), and she read to me some "Star Trek" trivia questions that appeared in one of her magazines. I got 1 out of 2 right but dispute the veracity of the second question!

Anyway, if you don't already know, "Star Trek" is my favorite TV program. You enjoyed watching the cartoons versions of it and The Original Series (The ones with Captain Kirk) while a toddler and in preschool). For a while, you even had each of the action figures fromt he series!

I watched "Star Trek" ever since I was your age (five) and really got hooked when the cartoons came on the air - I was probably in first grade when that happened. Of course, the show was cool in that it offered all kinds of action and cool monsters and neat gadgets. But I also really liked the adventure of traveling to new and exotic locations - one of the most interesting "planets" that I always wanted to visit as a kid was filmed at Vasquez Rocks County Park - where we did lots of hiking when we lived in California!

But what I liked most about the show was its philosophy that people could get along and work together out of mutual respect for one another. The Enterprise crew were noble people who came in peace and only wanted to learn about places and cultures they encountered. They defended a civilization where people were equal, intellectual and just.

Do you still watch "Star Trek"? I would love to watch it with you (and introduce you to Grandma, too!).

Wish I could be there for first day of kindergarten

This week you likely began kindergarten, Kieran, and I want you to know that I'm sorry I wasn't there to see you off on your first day or to find out at the end of the day your thoughts and feelings about this first big day in your education. My not being there was not my choice; I fought in the courts to be able to see you earlier this summer but was denied because of lies told about me. I am continuing to fight, however, through the courts for us to be together and have a good attorney now who should be able to reunite us at long last.

The first day of kindergarten may not be something you remember, but it certainly is an important day. As a news reporter, I covered the first day of kindergarten a few times, even interviewing the children. It perhaps was more of an emotional day for the parents dropping off their children, as mom and dad finally realize their child is taking his first real flight from the nest.

You'll learn a lot in kindergarten, and it'll be a lot of fun for you, of that I'm sure. You'll have the opportunity to make new friends, some of whom may last a lifetime. Be sure to get lots of sleep and to always eat a good breakfast before heading off to school - that'll always make the day go smoother!

Soon I'll be able to see you again, and when I do, I want you to show me your kindergarten classroom and introduce me to your teacher and all of friends. Okay? Okay!

Watching traffic at the playground together

Here's a journal entry from mid November 2009 about climbing the playground rocks at Lancaster City Park:

My fingers grab hold of a niche in the hard fiberglass rock, just behind the heel of your small feet. Children's laughter and gleeful screeches bound behind us. We reach the rock's summit, and you pat the rock for me to sit next ot you. Silently, we face the freeway beyond the park's soccer field. The rock's pebbeled surface leaves impressions in the pads of my fingers.

"Eighteen wheeler!" you suddenly shout, pointing at the freeway.

I glance up, catch the tail of a semi-trailer zomming out of my view.

"Another eighteen wheeler!" you say as one zips past going in the other direction. A silent beat. "Garbage truck!" you holler.

"There goes an ambulance," I respond.

"No lights on," you say.

"It must be going back to the fire station."

Then barely before I finish, you shout, "SUV!"

Our exchange goes on like this for a while, each pointing out to the other every fuel truck, motorcycle, bus and police car that passes. All the while your sidle closer to me. A lull in the traffic leaves us sitting quietly next to one another.

"Would you like to go now?" I ask.

You shake your head.

"Do you want to play on the slide or the jungle gym?"

You shake your head again.

"What would you like to do then?"

Your cheek presses against my chest. "Stay here."

Your name and photo appear on blog!

The blog Indirect Observations gave a positive review to my latest book, “Hikes with Tykes: Games and Activities” on Monday day. In doing so, it ran a picture of the book's cover, which has you on it, and some background information about us and all of the hikes we've done over the years.

The blog also ran a picture of the author's son, a little boy who looks to be your age and dressed in his wildnerness explorer hat even looked a bit like you. The author wrote a very nice paragraph about how she and her son tried one of the games in the book and with great results! I guess the fun we had together is something other parents and their children also love to do!

Hopefully in another week or so I'll have all of this court stuff resolved so we can be together once again - and then have all kinds of fun once more!

First time you ever enjoyed popcorn

You might remember this story that I used to tell you about when you were a baby - no more than nine or 10 months old - about when I had made popcorn one evening. I sat in my lap, snug against my left side, as I watched television with a bowl of hot buttered popcorn tucked against my right side.

Once I started eating the popcorn, you sniffed the air and looked at me with this facial expression that said, "Can I have some, too?"

Because you didn't have any teeth yet, I was worried that you might choke on it, so I broke off a bit of the popcorn and placed it in you mouth. You sucked on it and had this look on your face that said, "Hmmm! This is good!"

After maybe half a minute, once all of the butter and salt had been sucked off the bit of popcorn, you spit it out! Patooie! Then you looked at me again with this expression that said, "Can I have some more?"

So I gave you another bit. And after sucking off all of the butter and salt, you spit out the popcorn bit again!

You must have done that for the next 10 minutes until you were all full and didn't want anymore!

Your sand toys through the years

As I promote my new book, which contains a poem set at Ventura Pier, I began to think of all of our great visits to that beach and the sand toys you had. You're always in my thoughts, it seems, no matter what I'm doing.

Your first sand toys weren't meant for the beach at all but for the big sand pits at the local playgrounds. The Santa Clarita park near where we lived when you were a year old had a great sand pit to play in around a huge castle-like play equipment. most of the other other parks had good sand pits, too, though of varying quality.

We mostly took our sand toys to the beach, though - lots of shovels, buckets, and a few plastic trucks that we could build roads for. There also was this great colorful toy that you could dump sand into and it would go through a funnel turning a wheel below it.

The picture on this page shows you in March 2012 at Ventura city beach with the Ventura Pier in the background. These were the last sand toys I purchased for you. I had forgot to bring our sand toys because I'd been moving stuff to our new condo, so we stopped at Target and picked up these!

Remember our R2 Trouble game?

Probably your favorite game to play as a preschooler was R2 Trouble. It had an R2D2 in the popmatic center where the dice was, and if R2 was standing after you popped it, you got to go again. The pieces also had little stickers of Clone Wars characters on them.

Because of your age, I had to simplify the rules for Trouble. For example, you didn't have to roll a six to go to start; you could go anytime you wanted.

The big problem we had with the game was that you didn't like when I landed on one of your pieces, sending you back to start over. So I made a rule that so long as we agreed not to send each other back to start, we couldn't move our piece on top of the other's. Sometimes, though, you couldn't resist sending one of my pieces home, and though I had ask to reconsider because that meant I could then do the same to you, you'd still send me back to start. Boy did you ever get mad, though, when I then did the same to you!

Because of the rules, the game really just became a race to see who could roll the highest numbers to get our pieces home first. Despite that, the game was a good way to teach you how to count, about the same rules of game playing, and learning how to deal deal with losing and adversity.

Later, as you learned how to use a scissors, you'd cut up pictures of Clone Wars action figures and tape them to the pieces so that we'd have new sets of characters to play with!