Lochlan was born on August 9, 2004, which makes him "three and a half." He's very excited about the "half" part: every morning he asks me, "Am I still three and a half?" "Lochlan" is an Irish name meaning "man from the land of the lakes." "Loch" means lake in Gaelic, the original language of Ireland and Scotland. We were living by a big, beautiful lake in western Galway called Loch Corrib when Lochlan was born. Maybe you've heard of the Loch Ness monster? In addition to being a legendary dinosaur-like creature who may or may not inhabit a Scottish lake, this is also one of Lochlan's nicknames.
Here he is dressed up as a bald eagle for Halloween. For anyone unfamiliar with U.S. Halloween celebrations, kids wear costumes and go to door to door saying "trick or treat" and collecting candy. If you aren't a seamstress or an arts-and-crafts type of person (I'm not), you can buy a costume at the store. They tend to be Supermen, Power Rangers, or doggies, however. So when Lochlan announced he wanted to be a bald eagle for Halloween, I was a little worried. Despite being the national bird, the eagle is shockingly underrepresented among ready-made Halloween costumes. I was on my own. Actually, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I glued white feathers all over a rubbery "bald head" hat. Then I took a pair of white "angel wings," broke them in half, painted them brown, and used elastics to attach them to his arms. He had a beak but he hated to wear it, so I just face-painted his nose yellow. He also had talons on his feet, but you can't see them in the picture. He was very cute about wearing the costume. He'd keep saying, "I'm still a Lochlan...I'm still a Lochlan" as I was putting it on him. When it was all ready, he'd say, "Now I'm an eagle!" Then he'd run around yelling "Fly! Fly!"
It's actually not surprising that Lochlan wanted to be an eagle: he's quite a bird man. It all started when he was about one and a half. We were in the park and a huge flock of crows flew over us. There were hundreds of them and they were very noisy. Lochlan watched and listened for awhile, and then suddenly opened his mouth and started making perfect crow "caws." After that, whenever we saw a crow, he would imitate its call. Then he started doing other birds like cardinals and blue jays. I got him a kid's book of common birds with buttons to push to hear the songs. He learned those and wanted to know more. I could hardly keep up with him. We started going on outings with the Iowa City bird-watching club and got more books. So now he's definitely an expert. He can tell you, for instance, that a barred owl says,"Who cooks for you?" while a great horned owl says "How are you? I'm fine!" His love of nature is not limited to things that fly either. Here he is showing me an earthworm he found!1/4/08 Blog Topic for P1 Reading and Writing:
Now you introduce us to some of your family members: brothers or sisters, parents, your kids (I know at least one of you is a parent), cousins, whomever you chose. Put up some pictures if you have them. Include a few good stories with specific details that illustrate character.
