I begin with this portrait as I feel I’m unlikely to best it, my little bear jumping in the surf in Newport, Oregon at the very end of August…

The bear in question is now five, a fantastic age, better even than four, which was his best age to date. He is old enough to consistently beat me at monopoly (typically with three houses on Vine Street), and to tell me I’m “so silly” when I reveal that I used to do PE in “pants and vest” aka, for American readers, barefoot wearing only a ribbed singlet and underpants. For that matter, Rachel also thinks this preposterous.

Autumn has always been my favourite season and it therefore much to my annoyance that it lasts at best for one month in Portland, sandwiched between a summer which finishes in late September and the endless rainy season which begins in late October viz.

Portland vs regular seasons - I have no idea why I organized them in an anti-clockwise direction

This being the case, one has to make hay while the sun shines, or, more accurately, play in the hay before it resolves into mulch. Thus far: four corn mazes, three pumpkin patches, three rides on the cow train, three hay mazes, two hay rides and one apple festival. Meanwhile, Rachel has made pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies and pumpkin muffins and has cultivated the Platonic pumpkin in our very own front yard. All this and Halloween still a fortnight away; Ethan this year quite fancies going as an Angry Bird…

Of course, the most obvious thing to do when you are completely failing to maintain one blog is to start a new one, which is exactly what I’ve done: Things to do in Portland with Children is what you’d imagine it to be and puts to good use the photos I take as a matter of course when out with Ethan every weekend. Added benefit: my commitment to its upkeep spurs me towards new adventures!

Further confirmation of middle age is not simply the incomprehensibility of, but one’s exclusion from, the vernacular of youth; the tacit understanding that one’s clumsy imitation of the argot would lack nuance and conviction, and cause embarrassment all round, in the manner of Guy Ritchie’s friends pretending to be gangsters… When the cashier at Trader Joe’s remarked on my purchases, I had literally no idea what she’d just said. I must have looked bemused as she repeated herself, more slowly, as if condescending to an elderly relative. She looked to me a child, which I expect meant she was about twenty. Three seconds later my brain deciphered the utterance, “you really dig that fro-yo”. And indeed I had purchased three cartons of frozen yoghurt. But how to respond? Clearly not using the verb “dig” or the noun “fro-yo,” for risk of ridicule. “Indeed”, I said. I really only go there for the Port.

Another era ended last week. Ever since Ethan was very small I would dispel moments of defiance by reminding him that I’m the daddy bear and he’s the baby bear, a statement usually backed up with tickles, and repeated several times, to reinforce the lesson… The other day he approached me sheepishly with a point of fact, “umm, just so you know: we’re not actually bears, we’re people.” Personally I blame the education system; his teacher had found it necessary to correct him when he told her, “My daddy says I am definitely definitely a bear.”

On the positive side, his hand-eye coordination and patience have evolved to Nintendo Gamecube levels, and we wiled away a good proportion of the bank holiday weekend on the Mario Golf links.

This month – a trip Wahclella Falls in the Columbia Gorge. You can see these photos giant sized here. The first picture looks more dangerous than it was, so please don’t bother to call child services.

Right:  cave exploration with two young friends, the ceiling not much more than three feet high.

The natural beauty of this state is something to behold.

“Why is Daddy always saying about ginger kittens?”

That at least is a straightforward question to answer. They are one of my favourite things, and a little something I have in common with Maria from The Sound of Music. To be fair, she was all about the whiskers, I’m more into the gingerness, but I expect there was enough there to keep us cheerful as we fled from the Nazis.

I think the first time Ethan outfoxed me was during the period when I would occassionaly adjourn to the spare room at night to escape the rhythmic roar of Rachel’s CPAP machine, which she wears to combat sleep apnea. It takes a little while to offset the feeling that you’re sleeping with Darth Vader. Anyhow, it was Ethan’s bedtime and he kept running into the spare room saying, “No, I want to sleep in here tonight!”

“No, Ethan, you can’t sleep in here.”

“Why?”

“Because you have your own bed.”

“Daddy has his own bed.”

Touché. Mind you, that was fairly easy to wriggle out of compared to more recent conundrums including why it upsets some people (not sailors) to hear particular words and, more recently, why we eat certain animals and not others.

Ethan is askew from the average in that he is logically more rigorous and less easily befuddled by emotional overtures, in much the same way that Spock is generally superior to Kirk except with regards to fist-fighting and seducing alien women. On the other hand, Ethan shares Kirk’s exuberance and general disdain for orders. Either way, he’s headed for the bridge, that’s the main thing.

In other news, a parenting milestone was achieved just last week as Ethan introduced me to The World of Goo; a pastime in which we can, at last, engage fully as equals – if at times my occasional incompetence is a cause of frustration for the junior partner. This is really very refreshing, because to date I think it’s fair to say that apropos dominoes, football, scrabble, aikido etc I haven’t exactly been bringing my A-game. To be honest I even find myself sneaking in the odd excursion or two to the world of goo solo after he goes night night, while Dino Math Tracks, Sum Swamp, Curious George’s Beach Adventure Game, Money Bags and episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse are generally left untouched.

This episode’s pictures were taken on a springtime trip to the (riverside) beach on Sauvie Island, about a month ago, while Rachel travelled to Chicago to see her relatives. It was a sunny, still day, which kept the chill off, and we ended up hanging around for five hours, writing numbers in the sand, throwing stones in the water, building sand animals and taking brisk piggy back rides.

At last, definitive proof that sherry is the cure for the common cold.

As with most everything of interest to the average man of taste and discrimination, there is a notable paucity of research on the interweb regarding the restorative powers of Spanish intoxicants. This being the case, I felt it my duty to push back the boundaries of scientific reason and bring the burning light of knowledge to the dim though filthy rich alcoves of medical dogma.

To move directly to my conclusion, I can proudly announce that having been struck down by the most virulent and proleterian of everyday maladies viz. acute viral rhinopharyngitis on day one – and having consumed half a bottle of sherry every evening since that point – that day twenty-five finds me with no more than the merest whisper of that former affliction.

Of course, there will be doubters. Indeed at first I doubted the remedy myself, and felt compelled on day two to scribble the following rudely in my journal, “sherry to be recommended only for temporary palliative remedy of physical symptoms.” And yet before you today stands a man almost fully restored to health.

I am ashamed to admit that my good lady wife herself raised an eyebrow towards the purported medicinal qualities of the case of Lustau Rare Cream Solera “Superior” I wrestled into our cellar. Neither was the bathroom cabinet constructed to accommodate the dimensions of a 750ml tincture, nor was the liquor store minded to accept the card associated with my tax-deductible flex medical benefits account as legal tender.

Of course, this is but a sharp reminder that even in this so-called modern age, society has progressed little from its ancient and superstitious fancies and seeks at every turn to bar the forces of progress and enlightenment. The same regressive forces are no doubt similarly responsible for the rejection of my paper on the subject by the editorial boards of the BMJ (little better than witchdoctors), the JAMA (little worse than witchdoctors) and the Journal of The American Holistic Medical Association (literally witchdoctors).

The doubtful opinions of these supposed “experts” notwithstanding, I commend to you the Andalucian cure.

The pictures in this post were taken at the northernmost point in Portland, behind the confluence of the Columbia and Williamette rivers at Smith and Bybee Wetlands and in the neighbourhood of St Johns. Here we go up and down the stairs beneath the majestic St Johns bridge in Cathedral Park.

Ethan climbs an anemonite sculpture, meanwhile a dandelion surrenders to me.

Lost in the marshes. Would be idyllic were it not for the mosquitoes. Bring DEET.

We’re each of us unique, needless to say. At the same time, science has provided us with a variety of indices against which particular characteristics of personality may be evaluated. If you throw enough people at such metrics you’ll end up with an average and some sort of normal distribution around that mean. This much I remember from psychology and statistics.

What came as something of a revelation to me was that if my son’s idiosyncrasies - many of which I have joyfully alluded to in previous columns – were thus plotted, he would find himself rather towards the extremes on certain axes. He is, it would appear, statistically different. Whether these differences may be characterised as pathological is the subject of current scrutiny and the latest and most fashionable edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. In any case, difference is beautiful.

…If sometimes a little hard to get your head around. In retrospect, to have been suspended from the Kid’s Club of every 24-Hour Fitness in the tri-county area might have been regarded as symptomatic of something or other. Or his lack of embarrassment, natural phobias or respect for authority; but I rather interpreted this as a dashing, Byronic charm – how the ladies would swoon! – especially when fused with his absurdly handsome form. Love is of course blind and deaf also and insensible to reason; I suppose I was in denial; but then I have not really known too many four year olds; and then again, I heard a most fascinating story on This American Life of a father who managed to convince himself that his son was his biological offspring for twenty something years despite the fact that he was white and his son clearly was not.

At any rate, following a series of unfortunate events culminating in the destruction of a snail habitat with a broom handle, Ethan’s career at Brooklyn Preschool has been brought to an untimely close. You will be relieved to learn that the snails survived their ordeal unscathed and are now adjusting to the charms of life in tupperware. Meanwhile, Ethan had his first meeting with Multnomah County’s Early Childhood Evaluation Team just today. They all seemed lovely and I am confident that they will help us find whatever support he needs to adjust to a curriculum geared more towards the center of the bell jar. I mean curve.

On a lighter note: a cultural exchange. Here are two simple British dishes that America has never heard of, much to its deficit: welsh rarebit and (proper / afternoon tea) scones. The American substitute for the former is the vile “grilled cheese sandwich” – which is essentially two slices of Mother’s Pride with a Kraft single slapped between, then shallow fried. Meanwhile the American scone is a dry and crumbly affair, bereft of taste; fortunately easily distinguished by its triangular form.

Meanwhile, life in the former Empire might be significantly enriched by the adoption of both cinnamon rolls and hot fudge sauce. I can provide no cogent explanation as to why these delicacies have failed to transport themselves to the old world in much the same fashion as the potato, the tomato, tobacco and cocaine.

Here then, some photos from Oktoberfest in a rainy Mount Angel, Oregon. Don’t mention the war. To the left, Ethan munches a pretzel; that is supposedly a basketball painted on his cheek. To the right, a young fräulein and nephew, perhaps, prepare for the annexation of the Sudentenland festivities.

Perhaps the collected works of Goethe were a less than ideal choice of “book to tape” for our expedition. Young Ethan (fully one-eighth German by descent, you may recall) is clearly wracked with existential despair. Maybe some kettle corn will fix that?

The ever popular hay maze

Surely you are familiar with that most ancient of Bavarian delectables, the corn dog?