wild*life

We used to call my car Lufthansa.  That was back when it was James’ car and it hadn’t driven tens of thousands of miles carrying tens of thousands of house hunters.  It had the luxury car acceleration.  And silence.  And smell.  Then we traded in my previous vehicle, the Crop Duster, and I inherited Lufthansa.  That’s when her dashboard started to crack, myriad warning lights began flashing, and the battery became randomly unreliable.  Or reliably dead at 5AM as I’m leaving for the airport.  Twice.

Then there was that one incident where the rodents moved in and ate through the insulation protecting the cab from an engine fire.  Plus the window washer line.  And James read me the report from the mechanic mentioning something about five corpses.  “Plugging my ears… La la la la la… I can’t hear you.”

Oh, and did I forget to mention the ants?  For awhile the boys would groan and moan about having to ride in the Rat Mobile.  I tried to explain that they hadn’t made it into the cab of the car but whatevs… no half-eaten single serving trail mix bags and library books mucking-up my backseat?  Fine by me.

The most maddening thing is that all of the hydraulics have since given up the ghost.  I use a piece of PVC pipe to hold open the hood every night.  It seems field mice and mountain rats prefer roofs on their engine McMansions.

That reminds me of a story Granddad told me, courtesy of my little three-year-old nephew McMuffin, Bry Bry.  Seems he was practicing his archery at Granddad’s house but couldn’t seem to hit the target with his arrow.  After multiple attempts, he turns to his archery coach and declares, “Let’s make the grass the target.”  And he’s instantly transformed into a gold medalist.  Brilliant.

Meanwhile, back at the Rat Mobile… I’m hitting the button to open the back tailgate and the thing opens up to about chest height and then shuts itself.  I push the button again.  It opens and then closes.  I press the button over and over in exasperation as my groceries begin to melt in the parking lot.

Jake declares from his car seat, “Six times– new high score, Mom!”

Over the past two weeks or so, Jacob has developed an affinity for a Disney TV show called Bunk’d.  From what I can tell, it’s a tween sitcom that takes place at a fictional summer camp called Camp Kikiwaka.  There is one camper of most ethnic backgrounds including Ravi, Jorge, Zuri, Tiffany and Xander.  G-rated teen love mixed with antics and a laugh track.

I feel a little off balance given this new interest in shows that aren’t cartoons.  He vehemently denies liking the almost kissing scenes, despite the way he covers his face in giddy revulsion.

This new nine-year-old going on pre-tweeny Jacob says things like, “Wow Mom.  Just Wow.”  “Who does that?” And “Like, Duuuuh.”  Anytime I ask something such as, “Why do you only wear pajama bottoms?”  He says sassily, “Cuz I can.”  “Don’t judge.  Don’t judge.”  The weirdest of late is, “Nani?”  Which is a Yoda-like expression that appears to replace a confused, “What?”  He’s telling me that it’s Japanese.  Hmmmm.

This weekend Grandma Suzy somehow talked me into taking the boys with me to Trader’s Joe’s as a learning experience.  I wouldn’t want them almost growing-up and wandering around with a random armful of food like the three hundred college boys stuffing the aisles at my Trader Joe’s.

I was starting up the car in front of the vet clinic that graces the same strip mall and Jacob says to his brother, “Remember the boy and the girl we saw in there last time we were here?”

“Yeah.”

“They were holding hands and kissing.”

“I think they were really sad because probably their dog or their cat died.”

“Yeah, probably their dog.  Or maybe their cat died.”

“Definitely not a donkey,” says Nate.

“Or a frog,” says Jacob.

Not surprisingly, a spot-check of this blog for the popular search term “Handy Manny” returns no fewer than one dozen results… and our family vocab on “Lovely” shows appears to have been born in the late-2015-early-2016 toddler television era.

Yesterday I was talking to my three-almost-four-year-old nephew Bry-Bry and heard the words Dinosaur Train.  Who knew PBS Kids is actually a modern day time machine?  It’s been a long time since our living room was filled with the sounds of programs where we consistently envisioned a group of millennials in library glasses and sneakers, sitting around a conference room table, saying things like, “What do little boys like?”

“Bugs.”
“Airplanes.”
“Trucks!”
“Tractors?”
“Lions.”
“Animals.”
“Baby animals!”
“Robots?”
“Cars.”
“Dinosaurs!”
“Trains!”

And thus was born a lifetime of wheely cartoon animals and dinosaurs on trains.

For the last maybe two years, we fell down some kind of iPad Minecraft rabbit hole.  iPads and parentally-supervised YouTube channels became the screen time entertainment of choice… an uncomfortable realization has just come over me that perhaps I’ve forgotten to warn the world about Stampy and Pat & Jen?  OMG I hope it’s not too late.

Over the last few months or so we’ve introduced more of a family sitcom post-dinner and homework lovely show routine.  It’s been good since the boys are so busy with soccer and such that we consume our screen time as a family.  This has given rise to several new media genres including a crazy cool show called Magic for Humans and a formulaic school-aged hit called My Cat from Hell.  Or as Jake calls it, “My Cat from H-E-double hockey sticks.”

But our hands-down favorite new family lovely show is called The Zoo.  It takes place in the boogie-down Bronx.  We’re all dying to go there, especially before Mert the twenty-nine-year-old goose flies off to the great beyond.  Oh no… I just googled Mert and he passed away in March at the age of 29.  RIP big Mert.

Last week we’re watching the Zoo and it’s an episode about a baby gazelle with developmental issues.  Man those baby gazelles are lovely.  Anyway, Nate says, “What are those again Mom?  Cantaloupes?”

It’s been too long…

The last few weeks, Nate’s been somewhat sensitive and tearful at night.  He’s a pretty stoic guy so I know something’s bothering him.  After some gentle prying when he’s at his sleepiest, he finally blurts it out.  Turns out some kids in his class have been making fun of his name… or rather, the length of his name.  Apparently having a nine-letter name like Nathaniel is just asking for second-grade ridicule.

As the offspring of Jaimie PeePee and James Fucillo effs his pillow… I’m doing my best to empathize.  I mean Nate has a lot of things going for him.  If the length of his name is the worst of it, I’m really kind of jealous.

So Nate and I start counting letters in people’s names and eureka– Cristiano Ronaldo has exactly the same number of letters in his name: sixteen.  The best soccer player in the world has a nine-letter first name?  Take that second grade.

Nate was really struggling with what he should be for Halloween, until we stumbled upon his name twin.  One full home game Ronaldo Juventus kit from Amazon and sim, we’re in business.

The irony in all this?  The primary name-heckling culprit?  A boy named Ronaldo.

We’re two weekends into the soccer season and so far so goooooooooool.

Or “golazo” as Nate likes to say.

I arrived late to Nate’s first game and found out I was substitute coaching.  Bad news?  We only had three players and had to borrow one every quarter from the other team.  Good news?  All that front door evening soccer practice is really paying off.  Apparently we’re called the Lion Panthers, not the Awesome Panthers as previously reported.  Not to be confused with the Lyin’ Panthers… or Supreme Court nominees.

Jacob prefers goalie, which is a terrific substitute for high intensity interval training.  Nothing like a simulated heart attack every three minutes.  The Gray Ghosts consist mostly of rookies.  Based on our first two games, Jake’s proposed renaming them the Crazy Comebacks.

Nate has the benefit of being one of the older kids on his team, which is generally the pattern every other year.  Last weekend I couldn’t get enough of the dad yelling, “C’mon Brady… pretend you’re having fun!”  Brady’s in kinder and isn’t yet sure he wants the ball to touch him.

Both of my sons are working on their soccer humility.  It’s particularly hard when Nate’s scored two hat tricks, from defense, and I’ve challenged him that he can only pass.  Especially when a family from the other team asks me, “Is that your son?  He’s so good.”  “Shhhhh…” I scream with my eyes.  We’re working on humble and helpful.

After our first game at Damon Garcia, Nate and I pause for a quick pit stop while Jake guards our mountain of chairs and gear and snack bags.  We head into the one room restroom and find both a regular toilet and a floor to face height urinal.  Perfect.  Nate’s unsure about his assigned facility…

“Do I just pee onto the floor?”

“Pretty much.”

And then I ask, “Have you ever used one of those before?”

“Nope…. Have you?”

“Nope.”

We’ve got the soccer fever.  Seems like it started with this year’s World Cup.  We poured over stickers and books and players.  We found out Nate has a knack for remembering names that might rival his mom’s.  And after nine years of persistent bedhead, Jake started caring about his hair.  Need I say more?

Once we couldn’t get our World Cup fix anymore, James found a series on the Italian professional team, Juventus.  And now we’re almost done with All or Nothing: Manchester City.  There’s a lot of “C’mon Ci-tay” being thrown around this house in a cockney accent.  Man City is an exciting and suspenseful series with the educational value of many Spanish-speaking players, but also provides a multitude of teachable moments particularly on the ‘f’ word and why Pep Guardiola uses it so much.  There’s just something about swearing in one’s second language that never carries the same verboten weight.  It might actually be worse if our teachable moments were on the equivalent Castilian phrase– joder puta.

Last Wednesday, Nate returned home from his first soccer practice mopey and despondent.  This is the opposite of Soccer Nate who practices his shots and saves on goal incessantly in front of the front door.  Anyone looking to pass, kick, block or shoot a ball can always find a willing partner in Nate.

Turns out Nate’s boys’ under eight’s team got their uniforms… a pink and navy striped jersey with matching pink knee socks.  Now to be fair, it’s Millenial pink, which is all the rage on Pinterest these days.  Needless to say, my childhood story of being on a championship pink basketball team and a winning ride in a pink ’59 Cadillac limo didn’t really hit the mark.  The days of “Mama, I like all the colors, even the girl colors” have vanished.

After dinner we had a cathartic team naming rant– top contenders included the Ferocious Flamingos, the Scary Shrimps, and the Spine-chilling Starfish.  The Blood-thirsty Pink Pigeons was my personal fave.  Adding Blood-thirsty to any pink jerseyed team strikes fear into the hearts of all competitors.

It also helped that we saw an episode of Man City in pink jerseys.  Their colors are navy and hot pink and they’re one of the best teams in Europe.  Nate’s disappointment seems to be waning just a bit.  He emphasized the team name they chose, “the Awesome Panthers.  Awesome Panthers.”

We may need to spring for navy socks for everyone.

Just one week ago we headed back to school.  Second grade and fourth grade.  Summer somehow flew by in a blur of sun scream and goalie camp.

Two weekends ago the boys and I embarked on a Saturday morning back-to-school shopping spree.  Growing up, this was always a much anticipated errand.  A right of passage really.  I remember my mom telling me I had $100 to spend.  Which, for the record, early on went pretty far at Mervyn’s.  Less so when I graduated to my ankle zip Guess jeans.  I’m confident that on my first day of fourth grade I wore said jeans with a new black sweater with a rainbow of geometric shapes.  I was like, so cute.  I even wore matching red hoop earrings I found in my mom’s junk jewelry box.  My very first dangly earrings.  I braided my hair the night before and then unbraided it to get that “just crimped” look— a key hack given my lack of heated styling tools.

So I take the boys out and we find the best selection of day-glo athleisure choices at Dick’s Sporting Goods.  We grab all the XS and S choices we can find and head into a spacious dressing room.  It’s technically a women’s dressing room but I fast talk the literate boys in and commence some clear life training I wasn’t expecting…

It’s like these people have never been clothes shopping before.  Nate doesn’t seem entirely familiar with the requirement to keep your underpants on when trying on clothes.  They’re completely smitten with their own reflections in the full length mirror.  It’s a chones dance party that successfully results in a handful of new brightly colored fashion statements.

On the night before the first day of school, as we’re driving home I ask Jake and Nate if they’re going to lay out their outfits for the next day.

Nate asks, bewildered, “Why?”

“You know, because you want to look your best for the first day of school!  You should pick your most favorite new outfit and lay it out on your bed.

Nate responds, “Hmmm.”

“No one has seen you all summer!  It’s your opportunity to come back and have everyone notice how great you look, right?”

Silence…

“This is really not something you’ve considered, huh?”

“No.”

Boys…

Hard to believe we’re already in the last week of summer vacay.  Last Friday I was invited to a final family Y camp barbecue at Meadow Park.  Reminder for next year: Bring our own barbecue if we want to eat at lunchtime.  Or eat.

So we’re sitting in the shade under the trees with dozens of other kids in orange shirts and Jake says, gesturing to a group of tweens in blue shirts, “Those are the LDPs.”

They’re separated from the main group, huddled together, staring at something that seems to be on the ground.  They never look at each other.  At some point they all laugh in unison and then go back to fixing their collective gaze at something exceedingly captivating.  I’m assuming LDP stands for something like Leadership Development Program…

“So what are LDPs?  Like counselors in training?”

Jacob replies disdainfully, ”Yeah.  They just want to be LDPs so they can boss littler kids around.  And look at their phones.”

A beat.

”I can’t wait till I’m an LDP.”

In the not so distant past, I remember spending many a weekend lamenting my new hobby I called “clothes management.”  It was the perpetual task of sorting and piling and checking miniature tags and realizing there were no tags because someone had been whining and pulling at the back of their neck and crying, “The flag, the flag is owie!” And so we cut ’em all off.

There were bins for later and bins for winter and bins for my-heart-is-breaking-at-the-thought-of-parting-with-this-little-bit-of-cloth-covered-in-drool-and-bark-chips.  I would sort and stack and fold and label and bag.  And then it seemed like I had to do it all again just eight weeks later.

Maybe two years ago I shipped a giant box to the Netherlands and had the most artistic quilts made out of all those precious baby clothes.  Seriously.  I went through 22+ pages of listings on Etsy.  (You’ll never find the time to make the quilt yourself.  Ship them to Holland, stat.)  They’re really the only material object I plan to grab in the event, heaven forbid, of a forest fire.

Then in the blink of an eye we went from the preschool crowd to underclassmen.  Clothes began to fit for six, even twelve months at a time and seasons became irrelevant.  Small people developed strong opinions and my taste in fashion was relegated to three times a year when I get to choose what is worn for exactly half a day: school picture day, family picture day, and Easter Sunday.  Also known as “Mom, does that mean I have to wear a pocket shirt?” days.

For the record, pocket shirts are generally collarless, soft t-shirts in fibers and colors found in nature.

At one point I had the ingenious idea to get rid of all of our patterned socks and just buy white.  That was back when our socks were all in a jumbled drawer in a closet without electricity.  Saved me hours of time and frustration.  Till it backfired.  And the boys would only wear mismatched socks covered in various cartoon characters or stripes.

Last weekend, I embarked on an afternoon of clothes management.  I’d gotten a little rusty, but it seems it’s just like riding a bike.  The boys’ closet consists of mostly neon athleisurewear, Pokémon and Minecraft shirts, and kneeless jeans.  I sorted and bagged our various free walk-a-thon t’s, summer tie-dye projects (this year I got smart and had them re-tie-dye last year’s project), and all the things with pulls, rips, and holes.  I bagged-up thirty pairs of little briefs that nobody fits into anymore (we’ve graduated to boxers), twenty pairs of uncomfortable black crew socks, and our Texan “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirts because they just incite bickering with San Luis Obispo Austin’s big sister, Taylor.

Part way through this project I decide to google “how many clothes does a kid need.”  This is great fun if you’re looking for a good chuckle.  “Choose a color palette?”  Ha!  Does fluorescent count?  I found all these mommy blogs written on kid “capsule wardrobes.”

Now I’m totally an aspiring capsule wardrober.  My Pinterest feed has all kinds of inspiration for paring back and mixing and matching classic, effortlessly chic pieces.  But the kid “capsule wardrobe” posts??  Crazy town. I don’t know who has spawned these opinionless kids who like khakis and button downs, but it sure isn’t me.  Capsule wardrobe connotes a sophistication rarely observed in the second grade… we’re aiming for more of a “diminished drawer” outcome.

What I did take away after about six minutes of realizing these mommy blogs were getting me nowhere was this: little people need a maximum of 14 shirts and 14 bottoms.  Two weeks.  That’s it.  Save money.  Do less laundry.  Wear your jeans more than once.  The rest of us do.

So, I decided to create my own Real World Boys’ Capsule Wardrobe (ages 7-9).  These clothes do not necessarily mix and match.  Your kids are not going to win a “best dressed” award.  The concept of “they’ll wear the clothes you buy them” is pointless.  We’re raising independent boys who are able to make good choices and practice sound judgment.  Their friends shop at Target.  They’ve been to Target.  Choose your battles.  And know that someday there will be crushes whose offhanded comments will send them back to you for some actual fashion consulting.

In the meantime, you come to this mommy blog for unvarnished, practical advice you can use… here goes:

• 4 pairs Lands End Iron Knee Jeans (dark wash makes it look like you’re trying)
• 7-10 athleisure shorts— various shades of gray are most versatile and tone down the “crazy” going on up top
• 7 athleisure shirts— generally any mix of fluorescent or brightly colored Adidas, Under Armour, Puma and Nike
• 7-9 character t-shirts (choice of Pokémon, Minecraft, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc.)
• 1 t-shirt supporting your elementary school
• 1 t-shirt from a university (as a reminder that college is a given)
• 1 collared shirt for the third grade Baila Folclórico or your cousin’s baptism
• 2 pocket shirts or Henleys for two picture days and holidays
• 1 pair of tennis shoes (Keens if you’re smart and like to get out the door quickly; PF Flyers if your kids insist on developing “life skills” like tying shoelaces (mommy eye roll))
• 1 pair camo Crocks
• 2 bright swimsuits with swim shirts (preferably long sleeve to reduce the amount of sun scream that needs applying– no, that’s not a typo)
• 14 pairs various Star Wars, Minecraft, other little boy boxers
• 10 pairs “no-complaining” socks (trademark pending)
• 4 pairs of pajamas
• 1 Minecraft hoodie
• 1 fluorescent puffer jacket

Organic?  Sustainable?  Fashionable?  No.  Realistic and “cool”?  No doubt.

This town seems to have a lot of identical twins.  Everybody loves twins, right?  There’s just something so mysterious and intriguing about two people that look exactly the same.  We have our twin neighbors who are straight out of Sweet Valley High, even though they’re still just eight.  One of my team members is a twin.  And two friends from work both have twin sons.

Our darling neighbors first gave me the tip that one has shorter hair than the other.  Which is not particularly easy to compare what with ponytails and those hair thingmajigs my sons don’t know the names of.  Then I got the tip on the teeny tiny freckle above one’s lip and that was the secret code I needed to unlocking the mysteries of twin identification.

Last summer at camp is when Nate met his first twins.  I ask him, “So, how do you tell them apart?”  And he says, “One has a booger in his nose.”

Not exactly the most trusty tip.

This summer he meets a new pair of twins at “SLO Parks and Recs” camp and he tells me they’re named Merick and Herick.  Of course this is definitely something I can remember.  Then the age old question, “So how do you tell them apart?”

And he says, “Herick has a pimple here, on his cheek.”

For the record, I don’t think he really grasps the meaning of pimple… he probably means mole.  But, even if he’s right, at least it’s better than the booger method?