A bit of advice: Practice Forgiveness

Throughout your life, Kieran, people will give you cause to be angry - some will be dishonest, wome will cheat you, some even will betray you. You can spend years thinking about why they did this. Such years are wasted time, though. It is best to forgive and to move on.

By "forgive" I do not mean to naively trust so you may be taken advantage of again. Instead, I mean to accept that what they have done is because of their own weaknesses - moral, emotional, spiritual, perhaps even physical. Perhaps if their lives had taken a different course years ago, they would not have wronged you or others as just have. And perhaps in the years ahead they will realize their weakness and strengthen their moral, emotional or spiritual fiber.

In the meantime, you must not let your anger and sense of hurt over their actions to rule you. You can empower yourself by forgiving them.

With that, my son, let give you some quotations about "forgiveness" to mull over and hopefully guide you:

"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." - Josiah Bailey

“…one who was ‘forgiven little, loves little.’” - W.P. “Ab” Abercrombie

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." - Les Brown

"Never does the human soul appear so strong as when is foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury." - Confucius 

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

We finally get to see and communicate with one another!

Good news, Kieran! My attorney and I had a court hearing yesterday morning.

The court ordered that I be able to visit you once a month with the opportunity for new visits. We'll get to meet at Genesis II, a center in Minenapolis. There's no word yet on exactly when the meeting will take place, but if I have not heard by Monday, I shall follow up.

I also get to send you an email once a week. Your mother will have to set up an email for you, read it to you, and then type your reply to me. There's no word yet on exactly when we can start emailing one another, but if I have not heard by Monday, I again shall follow up. There's really no reason we couldn't start emailing one another today, after all.

I'm really looking forward to seeing you again! We have a lot of catching up to do.

Decorating your new room

Went shopping this weekend with your grandma and purchased some items for our new house. I'm gettting excited about making the purchase and decorating the place the way I've always wanted my home to look; in the past, I either was just out of college and so had no money to outfit a home or I was living with someone else and had to compromise with their tastes - not that I ever disliked any of those mutual design decisions, but I always had to go with my second choice on everything.

I'm waiting to buy anything for your room, though - I want you to have a say in how you decorate it, such as the bedspread and posters and bathroom fixtures (yes, there's a half bath for you - sink, toilet, shower stall). We'll have lots of fun looking for stuff and decorating it.

Your nursery was a Classic Pooh and very cute. But it mainly was decorated to please your mother and me. I have a few of the items from the nursery and some pictures of it packed away. When we lived in the green house in Lancaster, your room had Star Wars decor and was red, white and blue. Jane and I were going to decorate your room at the Palmdale condo in football decor; she had picked out (and even purchased) this wonderful bedspread, lamp and other items, but we all know how that turned out.

Anyway, I'm thinking football again - except you had asked for an NFL helmet design. But I'm wide open to whatever you might like. And if you can;t decide, I may go with a surfer look! :)

My latest effort to see you again

Tomorrow is a big day for us, Kieran. My attorney and I are heading back to court for a hearing so we can see one another again.

We're asking for: the right to visit one another; the right for me to call you by telephone each night; that your mother write a weekly email updating me on your health and schooling.

Usually the court's goal is to reunite children with their parents; those who've written the law understand that families are important in people's lives. There are laws, though, to protect children who've been abused that result in families staying apart; unfortunately, sometimes angry people misuse those laws to keep children and their parents apart. In the long run, the court system typically recognizes this misuse, so say strong - time is on our side, and we will prevail.

In my next entry, I'll tell you how it all turns out. My fingers are crossed!

Have you made any good friends?

Now that you're off to kindergarten, I'd like to ask about your friends. You've probably made some while in daycare or playing around the neighborhood; once in school, young boys and girls have a tendency to quickly gather together in groups of like-interested children. What are their names? What are they interested in? What kinds of things do you like to do together?

I remember my own father asking me the same question when I first went off to kindergarten. I recall being a little anxious about the question, as if it were some measure of my worth as to whether or not I'd made friends or not with other children.

But I don't mean to make you feel anxious. Now that I'm older and a dad, I understand that my father wasn't judging me but simply taking an interest. Just as I once did, you're closing on a point in life when your friends' ideas and perspectives will become more important to you than your parents' views and opinions; it's a natural part of growing up. So knowing who are your friends tells me if I did a good job or not raising you - if you've selected friends who are good to you and keep you from getting into trouble, then I've done my job well; if you've chosen friends who are mean to you and get you into trouble, then I've done poorly. Knowing who your friends are isn't a measure of your worth - it's a measure of mine!

So, tell me about your friends...

Your favorite foods through the years

As we grow older, the kinds of foods we like change. When I was a little boy your age, I loved grape juice but now I don't like it all and prefer orange juice.

What kinds of foods did you like growing up? Here were some of your favorites from before you entered kindergarten: hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, apple juice, string cheese, squeezable yogurt, M&M's plain, Subway sandwiches (just the meat and cheese!), mint chocolate chip ice cream, lasagna, tiramisu, York Peppermint Patties, sugar cookies, potato chips, corn dogs, hamburgers.

One food you definitely disliked was peanut butter and anything containing nuts! You'd actually grimace whenever you thought something might contain nuts.

My favorite foods are shrimp, scallops, lobster, pizza and cashews. For beverages, I like coffee, Coca-Cola and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

What are your favorite foods?

Do you reall your bunny Logs?

You and Logs in Mojave
Desert, March 2011.

When you were a toddler, you won a bunny rabbit at the Poppy Festival in Lancaster. He was your best companion by far, always carried around and in bed with you. About a year or so later, you found at some store an identical but shorter and smaller bunny. You begged me to buy it for you, and I did.

You named the new stuffie Logs, and that bunny became your best pal, always carried around and in bed with you. I'm not sure why you named it "Logs"; it might have been misheard name of a clone trooper on "Star Wars: The Clone Wars", I think, but Logs stuck.

You then renamed the bigger bunny "Log's Daddy"! I was very flattered by that! Log's Daddy stayed with me in San Diego and always had a reunion with Logs when you visited on weekends.

I'm not certain what happened to either bunny in the various moves we made. I'm betting you still have Logs, though!