Rylan Swim

Rylan has graduated from swim class. He took the Infant Swim Resource program for about six weeks. They had classes in Aina Haina and Joni took him there every morning for a 10 minute session in the pool with the ISR instructor. For weeks it seemed we were just torturing our Baby Rylan. In the end he made a dramatic improvement and now swims well – well for a 22 month old anyway, its not like he is going to set any world records yet. As a graduation test they threw him in the pool with his clothes on; he had to make it back to the edge of the pool unaided. No problem. This is a video of us a few weeks later at the Palolo Valley pool. Based on the number of views on You Tube maybe a bunch of you have watched this already, but here it is again…


What you don’t see in the video is how well he can float on his back. He does that thing where he flips over to catch a breath of air as he swims. Once he started to get tired he spends more and more time on his back catching his breath. This video shows a short rest, he can float on his back for minutes at a time (never tested how long he can sustain it). He uses these swimming skills to get away from us and avoid soap during his bath. When the soap comes out he get as much of his body under the water as he can to avoid the cleaning – which is odd because he likes being clean. When he lies on his back his ears are well under water – he likes this because of the way things sound, he will start singing and yelling just to hear how it sounds underwater.

The only problem with swimming at the city pools is that they don’t allow jumping in from the side, which is one of Rylan’s favorite things to do. We typically do it a few time and see how long we can get away with it before the life guard comes over and scolds us.

Had another first this weekend with Rylan. At least it seemed like a first – he played pretend. He handed me imaginary items at the dinner table. It started by him handing me his plastic animals one at a time, then when he ran out of those, he paused and then just pretended to pick up something with his fingers and hand it off to me. I would put the imaginary thing away and he would reach for another and give it to me. This went on for some time and he asked for them back after awhile. I would pretend to give them back and then he would get all excited. He has done a few other things like this since then that seems to indicate a new part of his brain becoming active. Always entertaining.

At the same dinner table, in a diner in Kihei, Maui the day after Thanksgiving, Rylan would only eat fries if I stuck them on the sword of his Indiana Jones-like plastic swashbuckler action figure. He calls the action figure Daddy. He would stick the loaded sword in his mouth and eat the fries like that. What ever it takes to get food into him. Maybe he will eat enough to grow hair some day.

Animals

Long time no post. As usual for this year, work has been hectic. Put together a group of photos taken in August and September with Rylan visiting animals. The first one is from the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki where they have a number of relatively exotic animals, including a penguin:


His favorite animal is a cow. He can't get enough Mooooooo. Here Rylan visits a cow at the Honolulu zoo (I think that's where it is):


On Kauai we ate at an old restaraunt in Lihue/Puhi for Jodie and Ron's wedding that had a horse ride through the old plantation. Didn't go on the ride but Rylan and I got to feed the horse:


And our favorite animal, the rooster:

Actually, as you can tell from Rylan's face, roosters are not our favorite. A rooster moved into our nice quiet neighborhood about a month ago or so. He took up residence in a tree across the street and woke us up every morning at 5am and again at 6am. This was when I was traveling for the TMT project and was always very tired. I wanted to deep fry that rooster every morning. I was not alone, all the neighbors felt the same way about the rooster, but no one seemed to have an answer.

So I borrowed Jayden’s airsoft gun and scouted out that rooster’s roost. Joni, Joel, and I put on our camo outfits and drew a bead on that rooster. I hit him square with the gun but he flew off with Joni giving chase. The bird took shelter under a bush down the street. I couldn’t get the gun ready to fire again so I took out the machete and took a swing at him. But he had too much life left in him and he ran off at the last moment before the blade severed his head from his body.

The whole neighborhood rejoiced that next morning though because the rooster did not sound off at 5am. For a few days all was quiet and everyone hoped that the rooster had suffered a fatal blow and crawled off and passed away after I hit him with the airsoft gun.

There was not a peaceful third morning though. The rooster was back. He moved to the other side of the house and decided 4:30, 5:30, and 6:10am were more appropriate times to sound off. This inspired neighbor Hector to get involved in the hunt and I obtained a more powerful pellet gun from Michael. Hector and I would prowl around various back yards before the sun came up searching for that damn rooster. The rooster would always take off just before we could draw a bead on him and take a shot. He was one smart rooster: as soon as we got near he would stop crowing, as soon as we pointed the gun in his direction he would take flight, and every night he would change his roost just enough so we couldn’t find him.

A couple times I did get a shot off and hit him. Each time he would get quiet for a few days again. But he always came back. Now it seems like he has slowly faded away. I made one last shot at him that hurt him, a few days later neighbor Bob got his hands on him but couldn’t get a good grip, and a few other run ins seem to have taught him to keep his big beak shut. I still think he will come back and haunt us so we continue to maintain a trap borrowed from North Shore Michael in another neighbor’s back yard. The hunt continues…