Gold
A few months ago, I presented to a large audience at work using a LEGO analogy. Yes, that’s how I roll. Part of my hook was a tongue-in-cheek comment about probably having more invested in a particular asset than I did in my employer’s stock. I saw a flash of interest in the eyes of our most senior leader, curious as to what fortune I was alluding to.
At work we spend a lot of time discussing this marketing concept of “whole product.” Basically it just means all the elements and services of a product that make it complete for the target customer. And I’m right smack dab in the middle of LEGO’s target audience– pinned to the bullseye with an arrow straight through my credit card.
Of all the things in my life, LEGO is the most whole product I’ve found:
- Plastic bricks and “guys”: But it’s so much more.
- Visionary box: What amazing Harry Potter world might my sons build me? My new suitcase that actually opens to reveal fantastic beasts, including a teeny tiny niffler… pure magical genius.
- Detailed instructions; no words: Illiterate children rejoice.
- Extra pieces just in case: Man they think of everything.
- 5 9’s quality: I’m completely fascinated by their engineering and QA. Thousands upon thousands of itsy-bitsy pieces the size of Barbie diamond earrings. Never in the history of over 50 kits has a piece actually been missing.
- Age range: How frustrating or easy will this bad boy be?
- Easy to wrap box: Santa’s wrapping elves would agree.
- Online resources: Recycle the instruction booklets guilt-free.
- No parent “service” required: Yes I’m willing to shell out $60-$70 for quiet time. It’s “me” time plus it’s educational, right?
LEGOs are the Lululemon of toys. Pilates, kombucha, organic produce, cappuccinos, LEGOs.
And then I noticed my Google news feed sporting articles with headlines along the lines of: LEGO Bricks are a Better Investment than Gold Bricks
Dang, even their marketing’s good.
Why not?
Nate has an uncanny knack for people’s names. Learning them. Recalling them. He’s quite adept at navigating his “Russia 2018 World Cup” program, using the table of contents, to confirm what he already knows to be true: Mbappe plays for Paris Saint-Germain. He knows most everybody’s national team and club.
He also knows everybody on Jake’s basketball team and gets frustrated with me when I confuse Blake (the good, brown-haired tall kid) from his team, with Bryce (the good, brown-haired tall kid) from his brother’s team. The only discrepancy I’ve caught is that he’s completely convinced Rocco is named Baracko.
“It’s Baracko, Mom. Bah-rock-o.”
The Perfect Storm
Have I mentioned how I totally screwed-up? Yep. Completely. Mama-llama-ding-dong.
I signed-up for basketball and flag football and baseball. In my defense, it’s impossible to tell by their infrequently updated websites when the seasons will start and stop. The boys have been begging to play flag football for possibly two years. And after a year off, Jake’s ready to give baseball another crack. Meanwhile basketball has been so much fun I can’t believe we’ve waited until now to try it.
And so it’s the calm before the storm. I just spent an hour getting all the practices and games on my calendar. Including the absurd 4PM start times– doesn’t anybody work in this town?! It looks as though next week we have 4 different practices and 3 games. Somehow the football gods shined their glory upon us and put the boys on the same team. And it seems the gods of baseball are the same divine beings. This past Thursday I watched from the warmth of my car and my laptop as the boys played football in the…. wait for it…. snow.
So the good news is, it appears there are only two weeks of “Mom, what did you do??” and then basketball ends.
Pray for rain.
Cocoooo
Around Thanksgiving, Maestra Vega started socializing an upcoming fourth grade poetry assignment: Memorize and recite 25 lines of poetry in Spanish. No cue cards. No help. It can be one or two poems. Plus utilize all of your best presentation skills such as eye contact, projecting your voice, hand movements. No um’s.
Of course we pick our favorite poem about a kid getting eaten by a giant snake. Jake starts in with his usual woe is me business and the entire world creating impossible tasks and his old school (aka first grade) being so much easier. Every week he has a bit of a panicky “How many more days until my poems?” “Mom, I think it’s today.” “Mom, I’m sure it’s tomorrow!” (Meanwhile he hadn’t even gotten the assignment yet…)
And once the wave of crazy has passed, he buckles down. We practice in the shower. We practice in the car. We learn these two poems so quickly that when el 29 de enero (January 29th) comes around, we totally forget it’s The. Big. Day.
I pick Jacob up that evening from school and he casually mentions, “Oh yeah, Mom. Today was my poem day.”
“Oh sheesh. How’d it go?”
“Great. So easy.”
And the note from Maestra Vega confirms– an enthusiastic ¡Excelente!
Aye niño.
Boa Constrictora
Por Shel Silverstein
Traducida por Jesús y Rhonda Garcia
Me devora una boa constrictora,
Una boa constrictora
Una boa constrictora.
Me devora una boa constrictora,
Y no me agrada para nada.
Ándale pues,
Está en mis pies.
Madre mía,
Está en mi rodilla.
Qué lindura,
¿Está en mi cintura?
¿Que ha hecho?
¡Está en mi pecho!
¡Mira aquello!
¡Está en mi cuello!
¡Ay! que loco,
¡Se come mi cocoooo!
El Monstruo Grotesco
Por Shel Silverstein
¿Qué es aquello qu se ve
por la niebla aparecer?
Es el monstruo grotesco,
que anda por ahí suelto.
Si su cola tan larga es,
¿de qué tamaño puede ser
este monstruo grotesco
que anda por ahí suelto?
Candy
Every year I keep a careful eye on the mood and tone of Valentine’s Day. As we’re crowded around the coffee table, piled with chocolatey love treasures I nonchalantly observe:
Is anyone reading the notes they get?
Looking for covert messages of elementary school love?
Is anyone writing the notes with a special someone in mind?
I’ve noticed there is a special effort and concentration in writing one’s name in cursive. Nate’s new N is beautiful. And that’s about it.
No one is worried that their Reese’s peanut butter cups came with XOXO stickers and that someone might get the wrong idea. They’re only worried about peanut allergies and that ironically, our buddy Reece can’t eat Reese’s. He’s vegan.
Looks as though this year’s the same as the last. They’re still entirely consumed with their love for…
candy.
Adding Up… or Not
It’s February. That time of the year when your school-aged children enjoy a veritable month of three-day weekends. Fun fact: October is the only month with zero days off or minimum days. All the other months in the district calendar enjoy cryptic ellipses, rhombuses, rectangles, and triangles to signify the same thing: no school.
I’ve been meaning to do a little math, and here’s what I’ve found. There are:
365 days in a year
180 school days
104 weekend days
51 days of summer vacation
27 days of school year vacation
12 minimum days and
2 teacher workdays
So that’s 29 full days off of school, not including summer break. Meanwhile, back at the office we have…
20 days of accrued paid time off over the course of the year
7 holidays and
3 days of paid sick leave
For a total of 27 days off of work, or 30 if we’re assuming sick days are not meant for being sick.
Something’s not adding up here….
Let’s look at this math problem using another strategy (we’ve found multiple strategies are the key to extra credit at second grade math homework around our family coffee table).
Beyond summer break we have:
1 week off for Thanksgiving
2 weeks off for Christmas and
1 week off for Spring Break
Totals 4 weeks, which roughly aligns with the accrued time off above.
And if we compare the holidays side-by-side we’ve got:
The YMCA and SLO Parks and Rec need time to gird themselves for the summer and decompress once those 51 days of summer vacation are over. Some additional fun facts include an entire city without full-time day care or camp the first week after school gets out for the summer, as well as the full week before school starts in August. Plus they generally don’t work school holidays.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to catch-on to this new math.
Belly-up
I was putting on my wellies this week and I peer into our outdoor teak shoe box. Right in the bottom of Jacob’s rain boot is a blue belly lizard belly-up.
Who’s laughing now? Bwahahahahaha.
Joke’s on you little boys. Except the boys won’t seem to wear their rain boots anymore ever since they painted the shed with their dad and now “There’s paint all over them!”
So I guess the joke’s still on me. Pffft.
No It All Gift Guide for Boys (Ages 7-10)
Sometime in the last 18 months or so, our toy chest became the war chest. Gone are the cute little play foods, the American Girl puppies and Baby Cillo. They’ve been replaced with the Nerf rocket launchers and the plastic Halloween ninja daggers and the battery-operated softish bullet machine guns. Outside the front door is a cutesy wire mesh basket no longer filled with little square tyke shoes. It’s for our collection of squirt gun bazookas.
The boys have uncovered an amateur series on YouTube where the dad creates videos of Nerf battles with his little kids based on a casual interpretation of “plot.” My boys pine over this camera shot where YouTube Dad always runs to the garage, opens the door, and angels sing as he admires a full pegboard wall covered in every Nerf gun known to Hasbro. I don’t remember if there are gun outlines on the pegboard. Let’s assume there are.
I’m a bit late with this year’s gift guide for boys, ages 7-10. Shoot me. Just kidding. You know the rules:
No shooting anyone who is unarmed.
No shooting anyone without eye protection.
No shooting while not wearing eye protection.
The kitchen is closed Soldiers. Get outta here.
And while writing the holiday gift guide after the holidays is not ideal (as Jake says, “Don’t judge.”), it did allow me to gauge which gifts hit their mark. Plus we get another shot at the apple as birthdays are right around the straw bale corner.
Last year I came up with Fight, Flight, Write & Sight. These categories still Accustrike, so here we go, but in a slightly altered order:
FIGHT
Laser X Laser Tag: Plug in your headphones and listen to an exciting soundtrack of techno rock, interspersed with clear warnings you’ve been hit and are about to die. These bullet-free guns are the shizzah. The adrenaline and strategic scurrying around the house are a good alternative to cardio.
Bath bombs: Ease your sons into future educational trips to Sephora and Ulta by starting them at the “bathtub store.” Beauty products disguised as science. Play-up the “bomb” part.
Otterbox Defender Series: Protect their favorite possession, or yours.
Harry Potter movies box set: Little boys never seem to tire of watching all eight movies in this epic tale. Not unlike their enthusiasm for my epic Voldemort impression when he tries to kill Harry for the last time… my secret? Imagine yourself foisting a shot put— AH-vahda-kHA-DAH-vraH.
MIRA Lunch Food Jar: Fight the lunchbox blues with these great new thermoses in a rainbow of candy colors. Holds the usual chicken nuggets, meatballs, hamburgers, and leftover spaghetti. Ideal for adding taquitos into the repertoire.
Nerf Rivals: These are the créme de la créme of any Nerf arsenal. They require giant C batteries and make a threatening chainsaw noise if you hold the trigger just-so. I’m fairly certain I saw a red-haired Russian spy down at Tom’s Toys posing with these bad boys circa the 2016 election. A friend on Instagram claims they’re a true threat to the gift of eyesight therefore I recommend including…
SIGHT
Nerf Rival Face Shields & Ammo Vests: Just like they sound. Your darling baby boys now prefer Freddy Kruger face masks to hooded animal towels. Fortunately they still like making living room cardboard box cities as much as ever. In theory the Rival Ammo vests reduce the number of bullets you find in your high heeled shoes, and in the lights of your ceiling fans, and in your fiddle leaf fig trees. The face shields are too big so I recommend wrap-around sunglasses.
Personalized Nerf Dart Ammo Box: Found these while planning this year’s birthday party.
26″ Grabber: These are absolutely one of the best things I’ve ever gifted. The All Star of this list. I may put the 32″ one in my Amazon shopping cart right now. Inspire your children to adopt a creek, or a park, or some other trashy place. Fun for goofing around the house and for retrieving entire plaster statue hands and electrical cords out of San Luis Creek. Inspire and befriend passers-by who also want to help. Welcome junior citizens.
Prank Kit: Not sure which one is best, but this is sure to be a hit. Even just a whoopee cushion will illicit laughter for days.
FLIGHT
Basketballs: When I was a kid, basketball was reserved for the fourth to sixth grade crowd. Probably for a reason? If you have two kids, get two.
Basketball shoes: In this age bracket, the entire interior of your car will be filled with the overwhelmingly hot and humid smell of sweaty little boy. I blame basketball. They put these bad boys on and literally claim they can now jump and touch the weirdly low cabin-y ceiling of your orange house on a hill. They’ll follow that with, “Last Saturday I dunked it, Mom.” Seriously, that’s what they’ll say.
Soccer ball on a bungee cord: Our cousin has this and we love it. I remember his being staked into the grass, but looks like there are a bunch you just stake to yourself… especially good for families living in the boondocks on the precipice of a mountain with no walls or fences.
Wings of Fire series: You may think this should go under “write” but according to the official mythical creature filing system, dragon books go under flight. There are at least 12 books in this series. Unfortunately, fourth graders eat these $7 books like gourmet kettle chips.
WRITE
Guinness Book of World Records: My kid brother immersed himself in this book several decades ago. Fascinating how the pictures of the longest finger nails in the world continue to amaze and disgust seven-year-olds and their moms… searing themselves indelibly into your memory. Hours of backseat fun.
Barnes & Noble gift cards: Hours of winter fun. Also teaches children how to buy things, read prices, calculate math and talk to cashier strangers.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate: We’ll combine these two series into one gift guide listing. Considered contraband in the second grade library circles… I guess they’re reserved for the third graders? Bonus if you happen to have a kid named Nate.
Wellies
My tall Hunter wellies are well, shall we say, worn-in. No longer are they fashionable British rain boots. After several years of mud and chickens and brush clearing and dogs, they’re farm boots now.
Every time I go to put them on, I’m reminded of riding in the car not long ago. James is driving and I’m in the passenger seat. For some reason my boots come up in conversation and the boys start to giggle. That same stifled giggle from years ago when they thought they were pulling one over on me by referring to their derrieres as bum-bums.
I glance into the backseat suspiciously, “What’s so funny you two?”
“Daddy used your boot to kill a mouse.”
Yep… the rodent blogs just keep on coming.
Yahoo
Lately we’ve been enjoying a “family show” after dinner, sha-sha, and homework time. Mostly we like The Zoo and Crikey! It’s the Irwins. Well the show, not necessarily the title. Let the record show that I am against titles sporting exclamation points in any and all circumstances.
I’m always fielding questions. Reincarnation. Rabies. The depth and breadth of my expected knowledge is varied and unpredictable. Tonight Nate was a perpetual stream of questions. I missed almost the entire soundtrack to the show. At some point he asks, “So it laid twins?” referring to a set of baby lemurs. Jacob pipes-up in typical Jacob fashion, “They don’t lay, Nate.”
The vet is drawing blood from the Mama white rhino’s ear.
Nate: Are they taking out all her blood?
Me: No Nate. Just a little bit.
Nate: What happens if I fall down and all my blood falls out?
Me: All your blood?
Nate: Yeah. Am I dead?
Me: Yeah. Try not to do that.
Nate: OK.