Hey, stop calling me Lucan! Call yourself Lucan!
— Lucy’s rebuttal upon being compared to a 70s TV character

Occasionally the kid lets her freak flag fly and expresses her general disagreement with the concept of clothing by running around in her underwear shouting, “I’m half-naked! Can’t catch me!”

Picture a 3′ 3″ blur of hair, undies, and attitude. She basically looks like a miniature caveman with a Pampers sponsorship running amuck. Invariably, I’ll start calling her Lucan, no doubt because the most accessible (and least cluttered) filing cabinet in my brain is labeled:

“Old TV Show/Comic Book/Movie/Music (60s-80s) Trivia—VERY IMPORTANT!”

Lucan was a short-lived TV show in the ’70s that my little sister and I watched semi-regularly. It told the story of a dude who spends his childhood out in the forest and is raised by a bunch of wolves. He eventually gets reclaimed by society as a dirty, snarling, crazy-haired wild-child (the Bundle connection). He then grows up as a guinea pig in some government-sponsored research lab until his inevitable escape. Action and stuff ensue (at least for the season it was on). I’m actually startled by how much of this I’m remembering.

  Lucan Attacks!

Anyway, like a lot of useless info, the tale of Lucan is permanently embedded in my brain, probably hunkered down in my hippocampus, shooing away frivolous thoughts regarding the placement of car keys, wallets, and PIN codes.

So this is why I call the kid Lucan. And the funny thing is: this kid, all of 42 months old, takes much umbrage with this label. “Stop calling me Lucan. YOU’RE LUCAN!” she’ll yell as she dashes away from the 30+ year TV show aspersion. I get a kick out of that.

“Wubie crushed my wand — no magic show for him!”
— Lucy’s response after she waved her ‘magic wand’ (stick with a ribbon) in front of Wubie one too many times (he destroyed it).

We went to the SJ Obon with friends recently and had loads of fun, especially Lucy…she got to dance in her first Bon Odori.

Lucy went to her first Obon fest way back in 2008, when she was still a baby. Grandmommy had suggested we go, she had cut out a clipping from the newspaper for us, and urged us to go that very day (it was a Sunday and we had been visiting her in the hospital). We went and had a lovely time. Shortly thereafter Grandmommy got out of the hospital, so we all went together to the Palo Alto Obon fest. That was about a month before she passed away in September, and it was our last big outing together.

The Obon festival is held to remember ancestors and loved ones who are gone…so it seems appropriate that we keep going in memory of Grandmommy. (Posts from last year’s visits here and here.) If she were still here, she would surely be dancing with us!

Phalaenopsis, phalaenopsis…pretty flower, pretty flower… (to the tune of Frère Jacques) — Lucy’s song after visiting the orchid farm

We’ve had a pretty mild summer, a few hot days here and there. On the hot ones we head out of town…to the foggy city or to the cool beach. Here are some snaps from our summer so far, mostly beach pics. Stay tuned for part 2…

With June now over, I thought I’d make a post about it. In addition to the obligatory end of the month collage (above), here are a few notes from the month of June, 2010.

A few Lucy quotes from June:

“That’s Wubie, flowers, bunnies—and me, your little child.”
– when referring to my Father’s Day card.

“The bug on the windshield is crying”
– an observation while riding in the car

“Let’s walk over here Daddy, away from that obnoxious noise!”
– when coming across some city workers breaking up the sidewalk

“Let’s watch something bundley!”
– when requesting some TV time

Speaking of TV, we downgraded our Comcast cable subscription. Jill and I had actually discussed completely dumping cable a few months ago. At the time I said “Let’s wait until ‘Lost’ is finished. Well, Lost ended in May, so I finally got around to calling up Comcast last week.

When I told them we wanted to dump our cable (along with our landline phone), I was told that internet access by itself would cost about $60 a month. However, internet access plus a basic cable package would be about $52 per month. So, I took the $52 deal. So far we haven’t missed it. I’ll probably write up a more detailed post about this sometime in the near future.

Other notable happenings from the past month:

• Lucy attending her first wedding
• Lucy’s flying a kite for the first time
• Lucy no longer being the youngest kid at Christmas get-togethers
• Lucy’s first time in a bouncy house
• Mike hurt his ankle
• A new gadget
• Some quality time with Jill’s family
• Mike (finally) saw: Inglourious Basterds and The Hangover

Here’s #7 in an ongoing series of compilations showing how the kid has grown over the past half year.

Here are the previous pics. Click on a pic to view the original post. A super-duper size compilation of all 42 months is available here.

A while back my mom presented me with some old paperwork she’d found around her place. Included were a handful of essays I’d written back in elementary school. I was amazed she still had them after all these years. Anyway, I thought it’d be a good idea to scan and post some of them here on the blog. I’m sure Lucy will get a kick out of them one of these days.

This first post is from 1971 when I was just shy of my eighth birthday. If I remember correctly, I think we had to start off some mornings in class with a short essay, probably around fifty words. I remember racing through them; there was probably an ongoing competition between the kids regarding who could finish their essay the fastest.

Reading this stuff brought back some good memories of sharing a room with my brother, chickens and a rooster as pets, an obsession with baseball, and the simple things that can make a kid’s life such a joy. Quick note: when looking at the above picture, seeing the title retraced in ink, it reminded me of my little sister Patty. She’d practice writing by tracing the letters of my old school papers. That was something I’d completely forgotten until now.

View “Autobiography of a Seven Year Old” (3.6 MB – PDF)

It’s official. Lucy is no longer the youngest kid in the family. My brother is now a Grandpa! (Wow, that sounds weird.) Anyway, the joyous occasion happened last week and was met with much fanfare and happiness. Jill was so happy with the news that she immediately sent off a CARE package full of all the stuff a new mother and child would ever need.

Lucy is looking forward to seeing her newest relative. The notion of one younger and smaller than she is quite a novel concept to her.

Madame also enjoyed playing with the birthday girl’s toys….

But kept going back to the bouncy house….she even convinced her daddy to bounce!

They were crafts…a pinata…loads of balloons…cupcakes…phew!

It was a great party, and we stayed til the very end. Just as we were about to leave, she got in one last bounce!

Notable happenings from the past month:

• Lucy attending her first ballet
• Lucy’s first dentist appointment
• Lunch with Thea, a friend we hadn’t seen in a very long time
• Family get-together at Gma Vita’s
• Family get-together with Gpa Tom, Laura, and John
• Farmers’ market trip with Gpa Tom (he even had Lucy wrapped on his back for a while!)
• The end of Lost

Our little girl went to her first ballet this weekend. I loved ballet when I was a kid, so this was a special moment for me. I was a bit teary-eyed when it started. It just hit me…I am with my baby…at her first ballet!

Lucy has recently started liking ballet, dancing around wearing her tutu, pretending she is Angelina Ballerina. So when the chance came to see a kid-centered ballet we took it.

The ballet we saw was the Ugly Duckling, featuring as many students as possible from the local ballet school, costumed as ducks, swans, flowers, cats, dogs, and chickens. The baby swan stole the show.

Madame behaved very well, applauding in all the right places, staying in her seat the whole time, and watching enraptured for much of it. Not bad for a 3 year old.

When I was a little girl I was obsessed with ballet, and remember asking my mom for ballet lessons…and her saying, ‘not ’til you’re 5′ (or was it 7? either way it seemed a long ways away.) And boy I held her to it!

I remember changing into my ballet clothes in the station wagon as my mom drove me to ballet from school. I remember watching the older girls in the advanced class taking pointe lessons, and dreaming of the day that would be me. I remember the wonder of seeing some of those same girls performing in the LA Ballet’s Nutcracker.

I don’t want or hope for madame to become a professional ballerina, that would be a hard life (low pay, constant aches and bruises and little time for anything else).

But I am happy that she likes ballet, and will be happy to see her studying it, and to take her to many more performances. And I can’t wait for the day when she will be the student up on stage for the first time taking her bows.