wild*life

Harry Potter has a lightening bolt on his forehead.  Jake has a pentagon.  No joke.  He was born with veins on the left side of his forehead that look just like the shape on a soccer ball.

Much to the joy and delight of his mommy and granddad…

He has been obsessed with anything remotely resembling a ball for most of his life at this point.  So, what would any good mommy do?  Lie of course.

I lied about his age (only by 2 months) and signed him up for “Bug Ball” with his buddy Costa.  Yesterday was their second “soccer practice.”  Yes, I paid good money to have Jake run around and kick the ball on a field, which he does for free, up and down the hallway night and day.

They have “drills” like:

* “Run to the red (yellow, green, blue) cone”:  Jacob has no idea what is going on, but really, does anyone else?

* “Stop the ball with your elbow (head, knee, foot)”:  Jake knows the words stop, ball and foot.  Yet, this still does not translate.

* They put out a tunnel and a balance beam and rings:  Jake tries to roll the tunnel around while other kids are in it.  He cannot be talked into entering the rolling tunnel of danger.  Costa picks up the blue and green ring every week and carries them around behind him… one in each hand.

* And they play parachute:  This week Jakey bravely ran under the chute several times.  He’s very careful not to be under it when we let it go and some of the kids come perilously close to suffocation by rainbow flying apparatus.

Since the World Cup, where my Spanish compadres exited victorious, Jake has learned to put his arms in the air and yell “Goooool!”  Except that if you listen very closely, you’ll notice he’s actually yelling “Dole!”  Perhaps he is cheering for pineapple…

Like most kids, Jakey is a dancin’ machine.  He rocks back and forth, from butt cheek to butt cheek, countless times a day.  You’re obliviously walking through Target and don’t even notice “Hey Soul Sister, ain’t that Mister Mister…” going on in the background until you see Jake rocking to the beat.  If he had a tail, it would be wagging.

Two weeks ago we went to Farmer’s Market in SLO (more on this later) and every block had a new live band.  Jakey was in heaven.

One afternoon he did an unforgettable rendition of the robot with various levels of bending at the waist.

Anything that makes a sound can be danced to… a cell phone ringing… the oven timer going off… but funniest of all is the thermometer.  (I’m sure Jacob will be soooo embarrassed by this blog in the future.  “Mooooooooom!  I can’t believe you wrote that!… that’s what he’ll say when he can speak in sentences.)  So, the thermometer.  You know the one.  The “unmentionable” thermometer.  It goes beep beep beep when it’s time to read the temperature, and brings a whole new meaning to the words Dance Fever.

So, according to this blog o’ mine, Jake got his first tooth when he was just about 7 months old.  (Apparently Einstein said something about not storing information in your head that you can easily look up… supposedly with regard to his own phone number being in the phone book.  Well, we know how I feel about phone books… In any case, I subscribe to this potential Einstein urban myth logic.  All important Jacob milestones are on the blog, not in the limited real estate of my noggin.)

So, 7 months.  Jake is now 15 months and has 8 teeth: 4 front top, 4 front bottom.  Based on my math, it took us 8 months to use one of those teeny little travel sized kid toothpaste tubes.  8 months.  Kids basically eat toothpaste and yes, toothpaste is poisonous.  Therefore, the toothpaste directions say something to the effect of “just barely get the bristles blue so as not to POISON the miniature love of your life.”

We just bought a regular size tube of kid toothpaste.  There was no option that didn’t contain sparkles.  My calculations suggest that Jake will be taking this toothpaste with him to college.

Level: Easy

Servings: 2 1/2

Time: At least 20 minutes of calm.

Ingredients & Directions:

Serve up 2 plates of grown-up dinner.

Pour 1 frosty beer to share.

Break 1 piece of corn on the cob in half.  Use 1 half now and reserve the other half for later.

Give corn to kid.

Eat at your leisure.  Converse without interruption.  Bon appetit!

Tonight I was reminded that Jakey cannot be trusted with crayons.  He bites off the little tips and eats them like they’re carrot sticks.  His clever daddy calls him Bluetooth.

At dawn, we are awakened by the son.

He struggles and toils in the valley of the bed.  He must climb Mama Mountain.

A great rumble erupts on the other side of the valley, then all is still.

He drinks from the River Baba.

Then he is set free.  To roam the great Shasta plains.

There is a new Jake in town.  I don’t know what it is exactly… a change of routine?  A change in school?  A change in his little 15-month old brain?  That often cited, potentially theoretical phenomenon called “teething”?

Almost overnight, everything about Jacob is meltdown-worthy.  Bath time’s over?  Nooooooooooooo!!  Put my PJ’s on?  The end of the world.  Wash my face?  When hell freezes over.  And just when everything causes some sort of fit, we’ve also noticed he’s started to say everything.

Before there are too many words to count, I thought I’d try and capture this vocabulary explosion:

Agua.  Apple.  Baba.  Ball (Still #1.  Almost certainly the first thing out of his mouth every single morning.)  Ba-bye.  Bath time.  Boppy.  Bubble.  Button! (Belly button).  Da Da.  Down.  Eyes.  Flower.  Hat.  Hot (Said in that whispery way that for some reason is unquestionably required of the word “hot.”)  Hi.  JJ.  Ma Ma.  Moo (In response to the question: What does a cow say?)  More (Still his only sign language).  Nana (Banana).  No (OK, maybe “ball” has fallen to #2.)  Nigh-nigh (This now also refers to his Nuk which is only allowed at bedtime…  I know, I know.  I am weak.)  Nose.  Outside!  Poo poo.  Pee pee (Hoping these announcements will actually prove useful during that much anticipated and dreaded phase: toilet training.)  See!  Shoe.  Uooo Uooo (Constant dog barking, for no reason easily discernible by the average adult.)  Up (Runner up to “ball.”  Don’t be surprised if you see James and I hobbling around like hunchbacks from lifting this 27 pound child up 10,000 times per day.)  At least 30 words…

We’ve also noticed 3 almost sentences: Whatizit?  Oh no! (Someone taught him this which includes putting both hands on the side of his face like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.  It has to have been someone at his new school.  I wish I had it on tape.)  All right! (Also said with a great deal of enthusiasm.)  All done! (This rivals “ball” in terms of repetition, however, don’t be fooled.  It does not usually mean he is in fact, all done.)

Let’s hope the fits stop and the manners start… soon.  Really soon.

He wore a washcloth beret

The kind you find on a bathroom floor

Washcloth beret

And if it was warm he wouldn’t wear much more.

I got this picture as a text on my iPhone with no note, from an unknown number.  Is it weird that my first thought was: OMG, what if this is a ransom text?…  “I have your child.  Give me a million dollars and nobody gets hurt.”

Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV lately… or Miami made me paranoid.  Luckily it’s just Jakey’s new teacher, Miss Dulce (“Sweet” in Spanish), texting me pictures of my little munchkin.  Phew!  I better get some sleep.

Newsflash: They have finally discovered the torture gene.  It is passed down through the maternal grandmother and can, in fact, skip a generation.  I work for a famous biotechnology company so, of course, I am privy to this type of super secret genetic informational scoop.  You read it here first.

My mom is known for her creativity when it comes to torturing her loved ones.  When I was three, she taught me how to take my hair and tickle my baby brother’s nose when he was sleeping in his car seat.  I subconsciously cover my rear end as I scamper up the stairs.  There is an extreme sense of vulnerability in a public port-a-potty.  And she is acclaimed for hiding in the dark and jumping out, sending that same younger brother into some sort of harmless, yet convulsive attack.  These examples barely scratch the surface.  The name “Aunt Suzy” is uttered in a tone of both awe and giddy fear by all of my cousins…

Jacob is clearly a carrier of said gene.  I’m pretty sure it began to manifest itself before his first birthday and has begun to advance at an alarming rate.

It began with the zerberts.  His giggle started to take on that slightly maniacal quality of a truly gifted family torturer.  Then he invented “Shut Mama in the Closet.”  This involves shutting me in my closet and then peeking in to see if I’m still in there and then shut the doors again real quick, laughing triumphantly.

Another one of his favorite torture tricks I like to call “Psych!”  Today when I arrived home, Jake was enjoying a pre-dinner hors d’oeuvre of cherries (“balls”… which just doesn’t sound right no matter how you frame it).  He always gets this big adorable smile on his face and offers to feed me.  He’ll get it all the way into my mouth and then, Psych!, redirects it into his mouth where he chomps it down, wiggling and laughing at his own torturing brilliance.

He’s taken this splendid torture recipe and reworked it to fit our morning routine.  He brushes his teeth with his Dada while I do my make-up at the sink.  Then every time my back is turned, he offers me his toothbrush.  As soon as I turn around, he quick puts it back in his mouth and pretends like nothing happened.  Endless glee.

Jakey clearly has a knack for this… scientifically proven, it’s in his genes.