a blog by Ian Kennedy
Tyler is now reading to us. It’s like magic – a couple of weeks ago he was sounding out simple words like “do” and “sat” and now he’s stringing whole sentences together.
He’s really excited to be able to read something to us. Just before bed he reads me a few pages, not too much in one go because that would take to long. We’ve got the bookmark in at the “Would you? Could you? In a car?” part.
There is a difference in each of our kids’ artwork. Julia, the younger one, draws with determination to express an emotion. The drawing on the left is Julia’s and although she says that it’s a dragon, it bears a striking resemblence to her mother.
Tyler is older and is much more detailed in his drawings. The picture on the right is his and you can see that he is using color and detail to explain a story. This one is of a dragon as well and takes place in the desert.
I took the morning off on Wednesday to take Julia to school for her “special day.” On this day, a parent stays with their child for the whole session and the child gets to sit up in front of the class next to the teacher and her parent and lead the activities for the day.
She has been going pre-school two days a week since we moved here and was very excited to show me her school. We sang Julia’s favorite songs (I finally learned the words to I’m a Little Teapot) and she was the line leader as we headed out to the playground. Later, we came in and ate a snack (sliced oranges and milk crackers) that Izumi prepared and picked up the artwork they had worked on earlier.
It was great to hang out with a room of three year-olds for a morning. I spent most of the free play time quizzing the kids on the various action figures that were in a bucket in the corner of the room. They knew them all – each of the Rugrat kids, various Star Wars characters, the members of the Incredible family, and of course the Disney animals. We also read a few books which they all enjoyed and was one way to quiet them down.
It’s always neat to see your daughter within a group of her peers. Julia’s on the quiet side, she keeps to herself a lot, pays attention to what’s going on and doesn’t get involved with the gossipy girls in the back of the class. But inside, you can see that she’s got lots of energy and is taking it all in like a sponge. Her teacher’s nickname for her is “Julia Jumping Bean” and when we went out to the playground you could see where that came from – everywhere we went, she was hoping around or up on her tippy toes.
Several times during the class, Julia would lean over to me and whisper, “Daddy, I like you very much!” I think she was pretty happy to have me there. Thanks for having me.
Here’s a shot of Tyler that will come in handy should he ever want to run for political office. Think of all the wonderful digital photos of everyone that are out floating around out there. Being a gossip columnist in 2020 is going to be great fun. A few image searches and follow-up emails and it’ll be possible to get childhood photos of anyone.
Thanks to Alex for the photo.
After some fun with Mie on Saturday, we stayed home on Easter Sunday to take part in the annual neighborhood easter egg hunt. We were told to leave a dozen eggs for every child under seven in the morning and the older kids on the block would hid them on the grass median in front of our house. At noon exactly, the elders of the block (second photo from the left) blew a whistle and all the kids ran across the street which had been blocked to traffic by two pickup trucks. For the next 30 minutes it was complete mayhem until all the eggs had been gathered up.
Izumi IM’ed me at work today:
izumikennedy: we have to come back from Aikido, tyler throw up, he cough too much.
me: oh no
me: is he ok now?
izumikennedy: he is fine , before class started, he was showing off to one of classmates about aikido and then he got too excited. and he started to cough and then he threw up.
me: poor guy, at least he’s excited about akido
Tyler needs to learn humility and respect. Less fidgeting, more attention.
This reminds me of the time my father was learning kyudo, the art of Japanese archery. For weeks he dutifully went to the dojo to practice and the sensei said that he would first need to practice his form with an old piece of rubber surgical tubing. He would stretch out the rubber as if pulling back a bow, then release and it to make this horrible, ungainly sound, phwap!!
It was so crude and clownish compared to the other archers who looked so graceful, releasing their arrows and having them sail the length of the gallery towards their targets. Each week Dad looked over at the others, longing for the day when he could try a real bow and each week, it was back to the surgical tubing. Stretch, aim, phwap! Stretch, aim, phwap! It was like practicing a crude form of scales. He had to practice in the corner, away from the others because the phwapping was distracting to the others, like loud farting.
After several weeks of this, sensei came over in the middle of his phwapping and gave my father an old bow. My father was told it was time to move up to practicing with an empty bow. Still no arrows but at least he had moved on from the surgical tubing. Barely able to repress his glee, he grasped the bow and joined the others in front of the gallery. He drew back, true to form, took aim, and zing the bowstring whizzed past his face and hooked his glasses and flung them a good twenty feet out into the gallery!
Sensei barked out for everyone to halt their practice and, through tightly pursed lips, hissed to my father to go fetch his glasses. When he scampered back to pick up the bow, sensei shook his head slowly, took the bow back and handed my father the limp old surgical tubing. It was back to the corner, for more stretch, aim, phwap!
For Tyler’s 6th Birthday we didn’t have a big party. He chose instead to redirect the birthday funds into a six disc DVD set of the first three Harry Potter movies. We’ve been reading the Potter books and Tyler has found a new world to explore beyond Thomas the Tank Engine. He picks up every piece of trivia, asks detailed questions, and is now studying the movies as eager as an acolyte.
Because her playmate is now entranced by the spell of Potter, Julia’s picked it up a bit as well. She hasn’t quite gotten the name of the the series down yet so she calls it “Hey You Potter” but she’s got the theme music down and both of them came to our bed this morning and greeted us with their renditions.
John & Yuko Garrett, two old friends from Tokyo, were visiting San Francisco this weekend and brought a bunch of us together for a BBQ and to meet their daughter, Emma Peach. It was great to catch up with Tom Watanabe, his wife, and others from the Linc Computer crowd.
A couple of the people there are, like me, married to Japanese and are trying to raise their kids to speak Japanese. Two of the couples speak nothing but Japanese when at home which I admire. It’s not only good for the kids, it would be good for me. Izumi’s English is much better than my Japanese and, frankly, I’m too lazy and too easily slip back into English.
We also met Joshua (on the left) who is building a house completely powered by solar. He figures he will make enough energy during the daylight hours to sell power back to the local utility which will more than make up for any energy he has to buy from them in the evenings. The total cost for the system is about $20k but with various government rebates and credits, all in costs will be more like $13k. Amortize the loan over 10 years and it works out about $150/month which is about what he’d pay for power anyway. Once it’s paid off, it’ll just make money for him, especially when you think that the price of electricity isn’t coming down anytime soon.
Tyler debuted on his little league T-ball team this past weekend. In Japan they have something called a koen debut which is the first time a mother takes their child to the park. It’s a stressful occasion because this is the time when mother and child learn if they are to be accepted into the community.
Taking your son to Little League has some of those elements. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a yelling-at-your-boy-from-the sidelines-to-pick-it-up type. I don’t even play baseball. But still, you always wonder if you’re both going to be accepted into the community.
I missed the buying of Tyler’s first baseball glove which, according to Izumi was memorable. Passing a rack of guns on the wall of the local sporting goods store Tyler questioned loudly why firearms were for sale, “Guns are bad, they shouldn’t be selling guns.” Right on. That’s my boy.
Each of the Little League team is named after a major league team and, seeing as Tyler and everyone on his team are just starting out, it seems fitting that he’s playing for The Nationals, the recently transplanted Montreal Expos, now reborn as Washington DC’s newest team.
I think it’s going to work out great. The coach is really nice and very patient working with the boys and is very good at explaining the basics. This week they worked on catching grounders. Hey, I might pick something up too!