L.A. Travelogue

My parents, Dave & Kathy, were just in town, and I love it when they visit. My house becomes cleaner, the kids are better groomed, and Ryan and I usually get a rare night out without kids. Some highlights of their trip were:

• Attending the filming of the Tonight Show - My parents weren't that enthused about Jay, but they were giddy as schoolgirls over David Archuleta


• The Getty - Amazing museum, gardens, and a spectacular view of L.A.

• Dining with the dolphins (or were they sharks?) at Duke's in Malibu

• Disneyland & California Adventure - I don't know who was the most excited about this, Kieran or my dad? Probably my dad.

Ryan and I had another quintessential L.A. experience. We attended a movie wrap party for Disney's Bolt at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood where the Oscars is filmed. We give the film two thumbs up, though we are biased.





In other news, I made my debut on national television...as an audience member on the Ellen's 900th show. It was kind of like going clubbing, except that it was in the afternoon, Steve Carell was there, the average age was closer to 50, and we all walked away with a new Blu-ray Disc player.

Kieran’s enjoying pre-school. I think he has his first crush on a little girl named Jaylene. He mentions her frequently and says she’s pretty. Should I be concerned that he’s not even three? His true love, however, is still monsters and dinosaurs. Here he is below practicing his smoldering look.






Haven is now eight months old and has three teeth and counting. She’s growing up way too fast.

Gritty Diapers

Jon, Bonnie and family were just in town, and we were happy to meet up with them at the beach a few times during their California vacation. We’ve discovered that Kieran has developed a full-fledged phobia of the beach and that Haven’s favorite food is sand. I’m not sure why Kieran has developed this fear. He’s never had any traumatic experiences at the beach. Out of the blue he’s afraid of the “milk” (translation: frothy white waves), because it’s “too loud.” Consequently, he spent the majority of his beach time by himself about 20 yards behind us. Haven didn’t mind since it meant more sand for herself. Check out the slideshow for pictures.

Ryan is just about at midterms and seems to be holding up well under the grueling weight of his reading assignments. He’s been reading so much that his eyes become physically sore. He recently had a story published in a literary journal, Wanderings Magazine. You can check it out at http://www.wanderingsmag.com/fiction.html.

Grandma's Update:
The big news in Haven's world is that she cut her first tooth this past week. She graciously let me know it had arrived by chomping down on my finger. She's also begun pulling herself up to a standing position. Kieran finds her more and more interesting, which is dangerous for her since he likes to see her fall over like a sack of potatoes. She winces any time he's within a about a 5-foot radius of her. I guess it's the typical big brother/little sister stuff. (I vaguely remember assuming a defensive position every time Jon walked by me until he left on his mission.) Her current hobbies include cornering the cats, trying to eat everyone's food, and splashing in the tub.

Kieran's big news is that he's semi potty trained. The degree of his success is correlated directly to two variables: his degree of nudity and the quality of the reward. He was doing really well when I let him run around naked all day at home and while we had a supply of miniature Cars figurines to give him every time he used the potty. Once that supply was exhausted and once he began wearing clothes again, his dedication dwindled. He kindly offered to give back some of his figurines to bring back some of the initial potty-training excitement, and I took him up on the reward recycling offer.

Haven at 6 months

The World According to Kieran (and Pixar)

Church is always a challenge with Kieran. To keep him well behaved, we usually play a type of "I Spy" game during sacrament meeting as part of our entertainment repetoire. Our new chapel is great for this game. It's the most ornate Mormon chapel--or temple, for that matter--that I've ever seen. It's a white, mosque-looking building that was dedicated in 1930 by then prophet, Heber J. Grant. The chapel is filled with stain glass windows. One window depicts a picture of Christ holding a lantern and knocking at a door. During the sacrament today, I asked Kieran if he could find the picture of Jesus, which he did. I asked him what Jesus was doing, and he said that he was knocking on a door. Since I need to make the game last as long as possible, I then asked him what Jesus was holding in his hand. He told me very matter-of-factly that Jesus was holding "the Ghostlight." To those of you who haven't watched the movie Cars and all its special features innumerable times, the ghostlight is a lantern the other characters use to scare the tow-truck, Mater. Who knew that the ghostlight had its beginning in the Bible!

This isn't the first time Kieran's world has been shaped by Pixar and the likes. We visited the La Brea tar pits a couple of weeks ago, which is just that. A tar pit. In the middle of Los Angeles. Thousands of ice-age fossils have been recovered from the pits and are displayed in a museum near the pits. While going through the museum, Kieran insisted on calling every wooly mammoth "Anny" after Manny in Ice Age, and every sabre tooth tiger he calls Diego. Now, all elephants are also called Anny, and anything even resembling a cat is called Diego. It's no use trying to correct him. Apparently, Pixar knows better than mommy.

Olympic Fiasco

Another month rolls by and more adventures and misadventures to share. The latter category is always more interesting, so I'll start there. During the Olympics, Ryan and I fell into the habit of staying up late to see whatever sports drama was unfolding that night. It's a painful habit when you have little ones that are relentless early birds, but somehow the Olympics suck us in every time. The morning after one of these late nights, Ryan says he has to tell me something that happened after I had gone to bed and "not to freak out." The last time he prefaced a story with directions "not to freak out" was when his school had gone on lock down after it was discovered that one of his students had brought a sawed-off shotgun to school--and it was in his classroom! Obviously, I'm immediately nervous. He begins to tell me how he had fallen asleep on the floor with the TV and lights on, and was awoken when he heard what sounded like someone trying to open the door on the front porch. Since it was a nice night, we had left the main door open and locked the security screen door. He went to the door and turned on the outside light and a black man (I only mention the race because it matters later in the story) was standing on our porch and had been looking in at Ryan. Ryan asked what he was doing there, and the man told him he was a neighbor and kept asking (in what Ryan later described as a syrupy sweet voice) "Don't you remember me, man?" Since Ryan had never seen him before and the guy wasn't answering Ryan's questions, Ryan told him to leave and that he was calling the police. The guy waited a few moments and then left. Of course, the seeming randomness of this whole incident left us feeling like maybe our little "up-and-coming" neighborhood wasn't the best choice and that maybe we should look for another place. The next day when we mentioned the incident to our neighbor she just chuckled. She explained that the previous tenant, a gay man, had sometimes trolled the neighborhood looking for a fling. Our late-night visitor had probably just been one of those flings. We had never met the previous tenant, so I asked our neighbor if Ryan looked like him. Her response was that all white people look the same to black people. :) Anyway, the pieces all seemed to fit--a late weekend night, a drunk guy talking in a sweet voice not wanting to be overt about his purpose, his dejection when Ryan told him to leave. It was no longer so random or alarming. Fortunately, we haven't had any other late night visitors since.

In the adventures category, every week we're checking off a few of the places on our to-do list and adding names to our celebrity sightings list. Two weeks ago we were at a children's park in Beverly Hills pushing Kieran in a swing next to Molly Shannon. A week before that Ryan had seen the big guy from Everybody Loves Raymond at another children's park near our home. If my job search doesn't produce some results soon, I may have to become a part-time paparazzo.



In other milestone news, Haven officially began crawling today. She had perfected the commando crawl over the past month and 4 days before her 6-month birthday decided she would evolve to the next level. Today we took her and Kieran to the L.A. temple in Santa Monica and let them play on the sprawling lawn there. Surprisingly, she loves playing in the grass, and her chubby knees and onesie were covered in grass stains. Kieran ran endlessly and quickly fell asleep in the car on the way home, which was the main purpose of our trip. He's begun asking lots of questions. My favorite is "What doing, mom?" He only asks that about 100 times a day. He's also taken up growling any time he's embarrased or doesn't know what to say. It's cute now, but I'm hoping he finds another coping mechanism before his teenage years.

Below are some pictures from over the past month:

1) The kids and I making modern art at The Getty

2) Kieran surrounded by all those things he loves

3) Ryan, Haven, Kieran & George (the monkey--or "tether" as my dad calls him) at the L.A. Zoo

California, Here We Come!

We said goodbye to our lives in Phoenix, and we say hello to Los Angeles. We've rented a 1920s home in what we think is part of the Jefferson Park neighborhood, but we’re not 100% sure. For those who know the area, we’re due West of downtown somewhere between Culver City, MidCity and USC. I describe the neighborhood euphemistically as “up-and-coming”. Unlike anywhere I’ve lived previously, we are actually the ones bringing diversity to the neighborhood. The neighbors are all really great, and the best part is we're only a few miles from the beach.

Haven and Kieran are growing up faster than I can document their changes. Haven is now 5 months old and is probably only weeks away from crawling. When she wakes up she usually babbles to herself for a while, which inevitably wakes up Kieran who begins laughing at her, which makes her laugh, which makes him laugh more, which then wakes us up. It’s not too bad of a way to wake up every morning, actually. Kieran is talking up a storm these days and repeats almost everything we say, a developmental phase that Ryan exploits. Kieran loves to pretend like we’re being chased by scary monsters and that we have to hide under whatever makeshift tent he can devise. He’s a very happy little guy.

Ryan begins school in a week, and I continue my job search. We're looking forward to taking advantage of the perks of living in L.A.

More Haven Pics