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Once a month is about my speed during the summer, eh?

Kiernen’s 4th birthday is coming up. And because we’ve gone and switched his diet around, I cannot do the grand and crazy cake I made last year, which was an entire gluten-free train.

I CAN make some SCD type cakes, which would be baked, but I was also thinking of something like this:

Directions can be found here.

Or this:

Original here.

Or some combination of both. He wanted me to incorporate Gordon the Train into his cake - he wanted Gordon to BE the cake, actually. But if I make the cake like the first one, I believe I can actually have a little track going around the cake upon which a TOY Gordon could ride, and that might do it for him. I could also have little giraffes and other small animals upon the cake, as well.

Since we are celebrating his birthday on August 9th (he turns 4 on the 10th), I am thinking about this constantly - going over and over things in my head and trying to figure out what the best options are.

For snacks, I was thinking of little nut ice cream parfaits with chocolate mousse ice cream and cashew whipped cream. Cut veggies, of course, with some raw dips to go with them maybe.

Any suggestions are welcome, too! He loves giraffes, so I am trying to incorporate giraffes and trains somehow…

He just said this to us:

“When I get older and I have scratchy face, I can have beer and salmon.”

Tonight we read a book about the human body. The amazing thing about Kiernen is that he really listens to and absorbs the books we read to him. He WANTS to know about the human body! The book we have is for older kids, really - I bought it because it was a deal and I figured we’d save it for later.

But true to myself, I hadn’t put it away yet, and tonight Kiernen got it out and asked me to read it to him. So I read parts of it to him - the parts about the internal organs and the different body systems and how they work. He listened intently and aasked appropriate questions that let me know he was really getting it. When we’d read about a particular organ, I’d point to the ares on his own body where it was so he could make the connection. When we talked about the function of the kidneys, I explained that ‘urine’ meant ‘pee’ and that ‘faeces’ was poo.*

* - Interestingly, when I was three was also when I learned the word ‘faeces’. What synchronicity.

And he seemed to get it. In fact, I had to cut it short because it was bedtime, but he wanted to keep reading the book. Cells! Bones! (we did read about bones, and because he has a friend here who has broken a bone, he got that one reall quickly). Muscles! Skin!

Wow, are we there already? Is my baby boy already able to understand about the human body and its parts? How? How are we already there?

This kid keeps amazing me with what he can comprehend and even explain to his younger cohorts. I need to step up, too - I keep pretending thinking he is still this little guy. Am I ready for this? We seem to be approaching the next level.

Now I”m off to look for images of Melman to figure out how I’m going to make his giraffe birthday cake. Unless he changes his mind again and wants Gordon**, or Wall-E.

** - Of course, Gordon DOES have the number 4, and Kiernen will be turning 4. But I made him a train cake last year - I’d really love to do something different.

CLICK! CLICK!

Oh, hi. Right, there’s this blog. And I’ve been sadly neglecting it. Mostly because well, I’m not exactly sure what to do with it -I let my domain name expire and I haven’t been parked on it anyway, and maybe I ought to just create a blog called “The Adventures of Kiernen Phoenix” and get on with it, since I’ve been using this as a blog about him space anyway?

I didn’t know anyone noticed Thanks, Jessica. Wow. I feel all loved and stuff.

Wow, so we’ve been up to lots of stuff, it being all summer and the sun being out and all. Anyone who has ever lived in this part of the world knows that sun out = GO OUTSIDE because you never know when it is going to leave again (likely SOON). So get thee outside, NOW! And also, for most Canadians, it also means GO AWAY EVERY WEEKEND! GO CAMPING! GO GO GO OUTSIDE!!!!

So while we haven’t gone camping, we did go visit family in St. Louis, and we’ve been going to the beach on weekends, and of course to Confederation Park to ride the trains! And play in the giant sandbox!

And while I wasn’t paying attention somehow, Kiernen turned into a real boy. I no longer live with a toddler or even a little kid - I live with a boy. Complete with potty humour and carnage and CRASHing the cars and trains and pretend shooting at people, even though he has very little inkling of what a gun might be. We DO live in cohousing next to a ten-year-old boy whom Kiernen idolizes, so he has SOME inkling, but not a lot.

He does all sorts of things that make me crazy about him all over again:

He spontaneously declares his love for his friends. “I love you so much, Amber,” he’ll say. Or, “Mama, I love Min@ SO much. Does Min@ love ME so much, Mama?” Yes, yes she does. She asks for you daily, my sweet boy.

Min@ is like his little sister - those two have quite the sibling relationship. Amber, he has puppy dog eyes for - she is quite a popular little girl around here, all he kids adore her. She plays well with them, she directs them well, she is interested in all of them, and she has a really social IQ. She is also about to turn 6 three days after Kiernen turns 4, and anyone who knows my son knows how much he loves older kids. He is smitten.

He hugs his friends hello sometimes.

Why, when I sit down at my computer, does all of that cool stuff I’ve been meaning to share and blog about seem to fall away from my brain? It seems to be the effect of the white screen with text almost every time. Gah!

Kiernen is quite the interesting boy. He knows his books word for word. Some of the books we read, like the Noddy books, are chapter books. They have up to 10 chapters apiece. And yet he knows some of them verbatim. I mean as in, if I say ‘a’ instead of ‘the’, he will correct me. If I try to pull a fast one and change the text on him, he catches it every time. If I accidentally misspeak a word, he tells me about it.

He can count to 20! And he knows almost the entire alphabet and his numbers up to 19 by sight. He can sometimes spell his name by sight, as well. He loves to play games - we play dominoes, the memory game, Candyland, and Go Fish. He still is a whiz with puzzles up to about 48 pieces. He needs a bit of help with the 100 piece ones.

He loves stickers, and he has a sticker book (we got him a little notebook that he can draw and put stickers in). He has a sticker collection I’d have done anything for when I was a little girl.

He has recently developed a love for the Winnie-the-Pooh books - the chapter books - and we read those frequently now, as well. He still LOVES to read, and will have us read the same books over and over despite having an insanely large book collection for a kid his age (we never say no to books or puzzles and we LOVE thrift stores). His current favourites include the Franklin series, the Little Critter and the Little Monster books by Mercer Mayer, Winnie-the-Pooh, the Noddy books (old skool, we got him the ones I read as a child, complete with Golliwogs). Oh, and the Big Thomas book that Grandma Freda got him - that is always a favourite, he LOVEs to read those stories and will have us read all day if we’re willing (which sadly, we are not - our voices get tired!).

He keeps asking us for a two-wheeled bike. The Spiderman bike. We’ve tried them out when we’re at stores and those bikes are crazy heavy! He’s used to riding a trike or his rock and ride (equivalent to a big wheel) and those are light and easy to propel forward. This two wheel will take some getting used to, but still, he really wants one. So tonight I posted a wanted ad on Craigslist (why didn’t I think of this before?), because I believe in recycling and also those darn things are like $70 retail. I’ve already gotten a response, so please send energy that it’s legit and that I’m getting him a bike tomorrow or Friday - but don’t tell him! We totally want to surprise him for his birthday.

His birthday! Is coming August 10th! He is going to be FOUR whole years old! How on earth did that happen? I mean really - where’s my little baby boy go? I’ve even asked him that. He smiles at me and says, “Mama, are you playing a joke?” He’s totally into that phrase right now - “I’m just playing a joke, Mama.” He also loves knock-knock jokes - his favourite being the banana/orange one. If you’ve got any good knock-knock jokes a four-year-old (really?) would like, please share them with me. I suppose G00gle could enlighten me as well, eh?

We play a game called “Pank that Bum”. You can guess what it is, yes? We pretend to “pank” each other’s bums and then run before the other person can get ours. Lately it has evolved to “panking” another part of the person and that person then says, “That’s not my bum!” and we laugh. He has taught this game to every kid he has met and all of the kids who live here. His cousins in St. Louis, our friends’ kids in St. Louis (sorry, Cate and Alex), our friends’ kids in Port Townsend…yeah, he is pretty into this game right now. And also always asking about people’s gender and/or peni$/vulv@. “Is Min@ a girl, Mama? Does she have a vulv@?”

So of course we’ve talked about not touching other people’s vulv@s and peni$es and in the case of adult women, their brea$ts. Not that he’s tried to, but you know, just in case. Because he also likes to pretend to pinch people - he does it gently, but he will come up and pretend to pinch and say, “Pinch pinch!” and run away laughing, and in my case, because I am his Mama, he will do this to my brea$ts, as well. Sigh. And laughter.

He still will not go in the water at the beach, for example, but for a small cup of kombucha, he will take a bath, “No washing hair, Mama,” he admonishes. So we have progress. I’m hoping that if we keep going to the beach, maybe by the end of summer he will willingly put his feet in the water, maybe even walk in or something. We shall see. In the meanwhile we have sand toys to occupy while his friends swim and enjoy the water.

Perhaps I ought to close this post now (is anyone even reading still?) and save the rest for part 2? Or something. It’s a great summer! There is more to tell, and hopefully I’ll manage to tell it!

Meanwhile, to reward those still reading, here are some photos:

Crescent Beach 6.09

St. Louis 2009

Yesterday we took the kids to the Vancouver Aquarium - we were there all day, and we all had a blast. What amazing sights we got to see. Kiernen had so much fun, he immediately asked to return (as we were getting into the car) and has been asking to go back all day today. I took a few photos - you can click on the slideshow itself to see them larger:

I haven’t been on the computer or anywhere near the phone lately because the sun has finally come out - FINALLY! And for BC residents, that means that everyone goes outside and stays there for as long as they possibly can every day

We’ve been working lots in the garden and just being outside playing and enjoying the sun. This weekend we had a bike ride along a trail in a local park, and we’ve been out taking walks and playing in the park and just doing anything we can outside lately. It’s been days since I’ve even been on the computer.

We have a big compilation of photos we made from Quinn’s memorial on our wall in our stairway, and lately Kiernen wants to stop and look at it frequently when we’re walking on the stairs. He talks about Quinn a lot - he understands that he died (just like Gandalf and Palomei) and he says, “Quinn died. I don’t have him anymore.” Oh, my heart, my heart. We talk about the photos and he asks, “Where are me?” and we explain that Quinn was here before he was born. We go over all of this fairly regularly, as we do anything he is interested in - he wants to hear the stories of things over and over again.

Wednesdays I’m taking a beekeeping class with one of my neighbours, because we’re both really interested in beekeeping. Bees are SO fascinating! Kiernen and I went to the garden center and bought a couple of plants that attract bees. They were all over the heather and these other plants whose names escape me right now - there was this huge display just surrounded by little honeybees, and Kiernen was absolutely fascinated. So I bought two of these fragrant beauties and I told Kiernen that the bees would come to our house of we had these outside - and the very next day we had bees outside on these plants!

Kiernen was playing by the back door and came running into the kitchen to get me, saying, “Mama, I need you - come see!” I went with him and he showed me, “Look Mama! A bee!” We watched the bee through the screen door and then went outside and watched her, and I told him about how they’re collecting pollen to take back to the nest - he said, “Mama, I love the bees - they’re so cute!” He stands back and just watches them intently - I’m pretty sure that has I just let him, we’d have been at that garden store for hours just watching the bees. And I am delighted

The last photo taken of Palomei before he left his body.

MBD just left to take Palomei to the vet to be euthanized. I know that animals have no resistance (except when they hang around us humans too much), and that he is about to be released from a body that isn’t working for him anymore. I feel that this thing with our cats…are they going one by one, so we can be free to move on without them to the next place in our journey? I’ve no way of knowing. We always thought Babette would be the first to go - we thought she’d become diabetic and leave, she has always seemed the least healthy. And we kind of figured Gandalf would outlive them all - at least I did.

And in real life, Gandalf left first and now off goes Palomei - to be released into nonphysical, to rejoin Source, to be truly FREE. We will miss him so so much - he was really a great cat, despite all of the vomit and snorking and having to eat special food just to accommodate him.

So now we’ve just got the two girls, Babette and Frenzie. How will the hierarchy change without any males around here? Who will be the alpha now? How will the girls be without Pei? He has been their leader their whole lives, they’ve never ever had a life without him in it.

How the energies are changing around here - and by here I mean on this planet. we live in interesting times, indeed.

Palomei, run free - chase ethereal mice and sniff ethereal catnip, and just be in your Source. We love you so so much - thank you for being a part of our home and a part of our lives. Say hello to Gandalf for us - and enjoy ruffling with him again.

Kiernen has chicken pox and we’re pretty sure our oldest cat is dying.

Photos are here.

Kiernen is fine but itchy - the itching kept him (and therefore us) awake last night, so we’re pretty tired. We figured out that he had several pox in his bum crack and OW! A good bit of Lansinoh (that stuff is awesome) took care of that, though, and now he just tells me when he needs more ointment.

He’s got no appetite and is feeling sick just now, so has a towel in front of him, but hasn’t thrown up. He is watching DVDs galore, as is the special treat of having the Pox.

Interestingly we’ve been reading a book called “Arthur’s Chicken Pox” pretty regularly before he got the pox.

We’re having an interesting cat year. First Gandalf’s kidneys failed and he died. Then Babette got a burst blood vessel in her ear and it swelled for a long time, and we opted to just let it go down on its own after lancing it at the vet did nothing. So now she has cauliflower ear - we figure it gives her character. Her ear is still hard, we don’t know if it just hasn’t finished shrinking yet or if its staying that way. And now Palomei seems to be dying. He has had this sneezing thing that has been going on for months now, and just recently he went downhill fast, losing a third of his bodyweight. He is stuffed in both nostrils and his face seems to be swollen on one side. He isn’t eating and bites MBD when he tries to give him medicine - not like him. I suspect he is just telling him to let him die in peace.

Interesting energies afoot, for sure.

Actually, though, we’ve been having a good time lately with friends and planning our garden plots again - life has been good and busy.

The pox will be gone soon enough, and after tonight we will know better where Pei is going.