Being Kipper, Part 2

A post script to the Kipper story:

I like the notion of Daddy being Kipper and me being Tiger so much that last nigt when I went to bed, I pretended to be Tiger. Instead of a crib, I pretended to be climbing into my "basket". I also got to sleep with one of my doggy slippers since Kipper always sleeps with a slipper when he goes to bed. It's fun to be Tiger.

Eye Guy

One of my birthday gifts was a toy called K'Nex (I omit the initial K and call them simply "nex"). With this toy, you join together various eyes, noses, wheels, and wings to make various types of vehicles/people. When we first got this toy, Daddy constructed a K'Nex person that looks like the picture below and called him "eye guy." I have a sort of mixed relationship with eye guy. Every time we take out the K'Nex, I want Daddy (or Mommy) to make eye guy. I've even made some versions of eye guy myself. On the other hand, I sometimes find eye guy to be a bit menacing and don't want him around. Indeed, when we put the K'Nex away, I try to make sure that all of the eye guys are disassembled before going back into the box.


Eye Guy 

Being Kipper

Kipper the Dog 

Lately, I've been fascinated with Kipper the Dog and his friends. I like everything about Kipper, including the funny way that he talks. For instance, in running a race, I would say "ready, set, go." Kipper says,

Ready...steady...go!

Kipper calls flashlights torches and calls lots of other things funny names.

This morning while I was racing Matchbox cars with Daddy, he said, "ready...steady...go!" I asked Daddy if he was Kipper, and he said that he was and that I was Kipper's friend Tiger. We played at being Kipper until Daddy had to go to work. Daddy can even talk in the Kipper way as well. I like playing Kipper.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This weekend, Daddy and I planted a bunch of vegetables in our garden. We went out in the morning to the garden store and I picked out the plants that I wanted. First on the list was of course, tomatoes. We put these in big pots on the side of the house along with a bunch of special potting mixture. I liked putting the potting mixture into the pots. Next, we bought a pepper plant. Naturally, the plant had to produce peppers in my favorite color, yellow, so we picked one that did this. We planted the pepper plant in a pot as well. We also planted a basil plant. I like the fact the Licorice (who has gone to heaven) liked basil a lot.

Over the course of the winter, we improved a section of mostly dirt near the front of the house. Daddy said it's much easier to turn the soil over during rainy season than during the summer, when the ground gets quite hard. In doing this, Daddy would shovel out large hunks of soil, and then I would use a smaller weeder type thing to break up the dirt clods and smooth things down. At last, we were ready to plant in this new garden space. I picked out pea plants, broccoli, spinach, and chives to plant there. I espeically liked that the pea plants have tendrils to climb up a lattice that Daddy had set up. The bad news for the pea plants is that, a mere one day after planting, snails had eaten two out of the six plants. This got Daddy very busy in applying anti-snail stuff around the edge of the garden.

I like gardening lots and lots.

Birthday Cupcakes at Kindergym

Here are some photos from the cake and candles part of the belated 3rd birthday party I had with my friends on January 29. I got to celebrate twice since I had a family party in PA on my actual birthday (12/30) as well as this later one in my home state of CA. My kid party was at one of my favorite places, Kindergym, so my friends and I got to run around, climb, etc. before cupcake time. We have some video of playtime, but our still photos are only of cupcake time (plus one of me with my piggies-- before bedtime of course since they no longer are allowed in bed with me of night-- as those of you in the know are already aware).

Spring Training

Take me out to the ballgame 
Baseball spring training has recently started, so Daddy and I decided to pull out the batting tee and balls and work on honing my swing. I've made great strides since last year. I can now hit the ball quite nicely off of the tee. In fact, I nearly hit one of the balls out of the yard and into the street or "parking lot" as I like to call it. Daddy and Mommy also recently got me a "B" hat that's the perfect size for me, which I'm wore to my "spring training." Previously, I wore one of Daddy's B hats, but this was really too big for me.

Anyway, I've posted some "baseball cards" here. You'll also find some photos of me in my latest dress-up costume---Pooh, as well as some "posed" shots Mommy took of me in the hall. I like making faces for the camera.

Aidan Morgan, Card Shark

A coda to my earlier story about poker playing. Lately, I've taken to saying,

Poker is my favorite game.

Mommy wonders what sort of an impression the other Mommies and kids will have of both her and me with this pronouncement.

The Heffalump Movie

Mommy has offered to take me to a movie called The Heffalump Movie. It features all of my favorite Pooh characters and is in a real movie theater. I'm not sure I like movie theaters. They're dark and sometimes they have loud noises, neither of which appeal to me. As a result, I've been practicing playing movie theater to build up my courage. This past weekend, I built a Lego movie theater with Daddy. It featured a large screen and lots of seats including a balcony section. Soon it was time for people to watch The Heffalump Movie. For the first seating, I would place Lego blocks on each o the seats and I would say who they were. Sometimes I would ask Daddy who was sitting there. Guests for the first show included all the Pooh characters, Maisy, Tullulah (Maisy's bird friend), and Elmo. Guests that Daddy brought to the show included Phil Mickelson (one of my favorite golfers), Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson (my favorite politician), Richard Brevard Russell (I like his picture in the Lyndon Johnson book), Leland Olds (same story), and Tiger Woods.

For the second show, the guests consisted entirely of yellow Lego blocks, which I said were Tallulah. They were 17 Tallulahs at that show and no room for anyone else. Indeed, even the Tallulahs found the theater to be quite crowded.

A key difficulty in watching the movie is that, at random intervals, I lift the screen from its moorings and it flies away.

House of Cards

One of my favorite pastimes is poker. To play poker, of course, you need chips. I like to get out the chips and distribute neatly stacked piles to each of the players: Daddy, Peaches the stuffed bunny, The Bears, and myself. Then it's time to play. I know two poker variations, a game called "which is biggest" and a game called "which is smallest". Somehow, I prefer which is smallest. It's almost time to deal, but first Daddy has to remove the 5s from the deck and give these to me. "5" is my number and I like to have them all. Next, it's time to deal. Each person gets one card turned face up. Daddy then asks me,

Which is smallest?

Usually, I offer a random guess which we must then verify by counting backwards. Daddy starts at 10 and we count backwards together. Each time we hit a number where someone has a card of that number on the table, we turn it face down. When there's only one card left face-up, we know who the winner is. The losers then have to pay the winner one chip each.

We continue like this for a few rounds and then it's time for a building break. During this phase of the poker game, Daddy and I build a house of cards. Daddy sets up the basic structure and then I add to it. Daddy says I'm really good at adding on cards in building the house. After a little while a "breeze" kicks up. The breeze is really me blowing on the cards. It doesn't take much of a breeze---a zephyr really---for the house of cards to fall down and force us to rebuild.

Poker is fun!