wild*life

A few weeks ago we were leaving Target at the same time as a man and his two daughters.  The guy turns to me as we cross the parking lot and comments appreciatively as my children both center-splits hurdle the enormous red spheres in front of every Targét.  His girls seemed to walk right past without even the slightest impulse to conquer this manmade physical challenge.

He hadn’t even seen our walk in where they leapt onto the chest-high brick walls and then had to clear the pruned hedges of many small villages… sorry about that, I’m currently writing and watching the Sweden/Mexico World Cup game and am inspired by the accents of the best fútbol announcers on Fox.

The daughter father and I had a lovely little parking lot repartee on the differences between sons and daughters.  What I used to call princess explosion versus choo choo explosion.  At this age, it’s more like beautifully accessorized soccer game hairstyles versus “Did my son just jump through that brick window opening on the ground floor of this parking garage?”

This weekend we’re riding in the car and Nate says, “Mama, what’s that in your hair?”  When it comes to car rides, his view mostly includes the back of my head.

And I say, “What?  My barrette?”
“What’s a barrette?”
“Uh, it’s something girls use to clip their hair.”
And Nate replies, “Ewwww” and makes a grossed-out face.

I’m undecided on whether I’m more concerned that A) I’ve raised a child that is seven (and for the record, nine) and has never heard of barrettes, or B) hair clips are considered gross to this hurdler of giant red Target balls.

They may have left me with no choice… Commence Operation Princess Explosion.

This year we had two perfect parental party days.  Mother’s Day was likely the bathtub store’s most profitable day on record.  The shop girls recognized the entrance of three quarters of my family as sales jackpot material.  The boys departed with a giant floral box stuffed with all kinds of awesomeness.  After I enjoyed my breakfast in bed and opened my present, the boys read about each handmade luxury product and then meticulously planned their next six weeks of $6 bathing opportunities…  Then we did the Bob Jones trail, coffee and sustenance at Kraken, lunch at the new Creamery, and a beautiful dinner at Coach’s restaurant.  The whole day was just dreamy.

For Father’s Day, we made James breakfast in bed and then embarked on a stunning day trip to Hearst’s Castle.  The boys were unbelievably museum-worthy on the tour of the upstairs rooms and during the big screen movie.  It was the first time I remember liking the tour… I call the tower room!  The boys were especially intrigued by the indoor pool with real gold mosaics.

We stopped for lunch in San Simeon and left Nate in front of a sign promising an espresso and a kitty to unaccompanied children.  He left disappointed, decaffeinated and empty-handed.  We visited the elephant seals, spotted the field of zebras for the first time, and then made a quick stop for outrageously priced brown butter cookies.  An outstanding day celebrating an outstanding dad.

Later that afternoon, Nate made sure I knew how much he liked what we’d served his “Dady” for breakfast in bed.  He says to me, “Maybe when I’m a grown-up, my husband can make me that for breakfast in bed?”

And Jake chimes-in, “Your wife, Nate.  When you grow-up you’ll have a wife.”  (Nate is seven and girls are gross.  But he agrees to his brother’s forceful socialization.  I’m pretty sure he still might be holding-out hope that marrying your big brother is not, in fact, a faux pas.)

“Mama, Mama.  Do you think when I’m a dad my wife can make me that for my breakfast in bed?”

And I promise him that I’ll make a note for his future spouse.

Dearest Future Nate Spouse,

Since his first bite at the age of two, Nate has been a furtive fan of breakfast in bed.  He’s really looking forward to the day when he’s a grown-up and you serve him on a tray with a hot beverage and flowers and most importantly, a big Papa Bear-sized bowl of forbidden black rice pudding, garnished with mango and pomegranate seeds.  I’ve been asked by seven-year-old Nate to make sure you have this recipe… and this reminder.

We sure love our Nate and know you do, too.  He’s a serious catch.  You can’t go wrong with this recipe, a package of Lush bath bombs, and the loudest singing musical animal card you can find.

xoxo

My dear, dear JJ,

Please forgive the delay… I seem to be running about one year behind on just about everything.  Luckily this blog isn’t quite that delayed.  You’re nine and a quarter… which means I’m still well ahead of your Platform 9 3/4 t-shirt.

It just completely blows my mind that you’ve gone from that chubby-cheeked nonstop Baby Boss to the big kid you are now.  In my annual tradition, here’s a little glimpse into nine-year-old Jacob.

If Nate is our Sporty Spice, you’re our Spicy Spice.  Over the past year or so you’ve declared your love for Daddy’s tacos, and a generous helping of Cholula.  Your newfound love for tacos and sushi have saved our culinary lives.  Though sushi is a double-edged sword.  While my stomach appreciates you’ll eat just about anything, my wallet votes for grilled cheese.

And speaking of differences, this year has mostly been about you and Ron and Hermione.  I mean you and Otto and Veronica.  It seemed you were all getting along swimmingly until the last few months of the year where you and Veronica turned into oil and water.  Mr. Mayfield said he has never felt more like a marriage counselor– you on one side of the couch with your arms crossed, and V on the other with her hand tucked under her chin.  Hopefully summer’s temporary separation  helps to build each other up, instead of knocking each other down.

When it comes to building and creating and imagining what could be, you take the cake.  You spend every waking moment planning how you’re going to build an entire town with a zoo and a high school and office space.  You design your own comic books and graphic novels and illustrated Minecraft newspapers, including sponsored advertising.  You love to spend hours with me drawing and designing our perfect tree house, our ideal future house, a new dog pen, or where we should put things in the barn.  This afternoon you came up with a plan for the Halloween party we should throw seven months from now, including crafts and games and a costume contest.  Your Bean-Boozled prize idea was genius– a trick and a treat all in one.

You design and manufacture your own Pokémon cards and characters.  You whipped-up your own Plants versus Zombies board game one afternoon.  Another time you created an entire bakery out of construction paper.  All of your businesses are most definitely for profit.  You have an innate knack for business– continuously peppering me with questions on profitability and wages and supply chain logistics.  My mental math is constantly being tested and quizzed and challenged.  Today you figured out the business reasons behind the discrepancies in pricing between proprietary games like the Xbox versus the open platform that is the Apple App Store.  These things make intuitive sense to you.

And when it comes to intuition, strategy, and planning, you’re ten steps ahead.  You love chess and you say things in an ominous voiceover like, “It’s a game of strategy.  And sacrifice.”  A few weeks ago I asked you to be more gentle with the chess pieces and you carefully laid a trap.  You’re convinced you’re smarter than me, which may in fact prove true.  But oh contraire mon frère, the sweet ingenue replies, “Why how would I know the value of this hand-painted chess set?  There is only one man who knows.  And that man is… (dun dun dun) Santa Claus.”

You’re known for adding a well-timed dun dun dun.

Speaking of traps, years ago you mastered the art of “cutie eyes.”  You use them in real life and in illustrated “persuasive letters” written specifically to me and left on my pillow.

On the topic of persuasion, you start every single thing you say with, “Mama?”  And then I respond.  And then you tell me something bizarre or strange or hard to believe.  Today it was a fact about blue flames melting glass in less than a minute.  I’m never entirely sure.  Since the moment you could form sentences, you’ve possessed the knack to utter just about anything with such authority and confidence that seventy-year-old women always believe you.  Especially Grandma.

This year you decided not to play baseball and instead became the big brother of all the little baseball brothers.  You took them to the playgrounds and taught them to climb trees.  They marched behind you with sticks held high.  You taught them to scale the forbidden roofs of CL Smith storage sheds and provided endless piggy back rides.  You’re generous with my gum and snacks and earned yourself a well-deserved following.  You’ve decided you’d like to be a camp counselor and recognize the lack of gender diversity in camp counseling.

Therapeutically speaking, you’re intent on things that are cool.  You dab.  You floss.  You have a Minecraft backpack and people know you as “Creeper Bob.”  You’re fiercely protective of your unstructured leisure time.  You want access to coding and Legos and robots.

You’re motivated by Lego robots and challenges.  You’re intent on having your own money.  You like to be on time or early.  You made it across the ninja line after numerous attempts, but mostly to win a pack of Pokémon.  For Mother’s Day, you mapped the entire breakfast in bed tray including labels and checkboxes to track the process.  You know every word to all of the songs on the radio– it’s impressive.  We still read together every morning and most nights.  Of course you could read them yourself but we like our time together.

I love watching you grow and learn and become exactly who you already are.  I love you Jakey Cakes.  Every little funny, stubborn bit of you.  We’re so proud of you and are doing our best to savor every single second.

Love,
Mama

This weekend we had a bit of an “incident” in our front yard… but let’s take a step back.  Or a hop back if you will.

When I was a kid there was a time when we had bunnies.  My brother and I spent hours in the barn whipping-up Top Chef worthy bunny bites at our hipster eatery: Rabbit Restaurant.  At some point, our bunnies procreated, as they’re known to do, and we had our own fluffle.

One cold foggy morning it was my job to feed the farm and all I know is that I unwittingly stumbled upon a decapitated baby bunny lying several feet from the hutch.  We’ll never know exactly what happened, but my dad surmised a hole in the bottom of the hutch plus a heavy nesting box equaled the most disturbing image burned into my baby bunny brain for life.  For-e-ver.

So that’s my traumatic childhood baby bunny story.  And of course James has a story like this, too.

I’m sorry you now have an inkling of where this tale is headed.  Fast forward to this past Sunday.  We let the dogs out and they’re racing over the hill and through the wood.  All of a sudden Jacob is yelling– Piper has trapped a wild baby bunny in the lower meadow.  He’s running down the rocky embankment, screaming at a pair of hunting dogs.  The bunny is squeaking in distress.  And before he can get there, Piper scoops up her catch and makes a run for it.

Jacob grabs her at the top of the hill and makes the most heroic and valiant attempt.   It’s heartbreaking.  She won’t drop it.  James intervenes.  And, please excuse the traumatically graphic nature of this entire story– she swallows her marshmallow whole.  One little cotton ball down the hatch.

Poor Jakey is sobbing and angry and stalks into the house to grieve.  “Don’t feed her” he proclaims through gritted teeth, “She.  Already.  Ate.”

Sometimes nature is just too much.

Later that afternoon at the grocery store, everywhere I turn I’m faced with bunny fruit snacks and cheddar bunnies and bunny grahams.  A Whole Foods House of Horrors, Annie.

It’s been several days and I still can’t look Piper in the eye.  Jakey also needs more time.

Traumatic childhood baby bunny story?  Check.

Our very first autumn in San Luis, we played soccer, of course.  I’ll admit, I’m kind of in love with the plAYSOccer logo for AYSO.  Genius.  That was our first introduction to many of our current Pacheco parent friends.  It’s kind of funny to think back on those early sideline days.

One of my favorite memories was when Kai got a brand new baby sister.  I remember asking five-year-old Nate about it.

“So Nate… does Kai have a new baby sister yet?”
“Yep.”
“Oh how exciting!  What’s her name?  Do you know?”
And he replies, in all seriousness, “I think it’s uh… Princess Leia?”

She is now forever Princess Leia to me.

That same season is when we met little SloDoCo with the happiest, cutest grin ever.  He has a real name, but his donut shirt is forever etched in my memory.

That’s also the season when we met Kai’s little brother.  He had the coolest blond bangs that he was constantly adjusting via his professional surfer head snap.  My first memory is of three-year-old Jackson marching up and down Middle School hills with a big stick, and a flock of older followers behind him.  Make no mistake, he’s the leader of the pack.

Then last year on Nate’s baseball team, this little boy just started chatting me up like nobody’s business.  He had the two cutest dimples any person has ever possessed and wild blond hair.  Fast-forward another year and we’re back together again in the stands.  I have the biggest snack bag so I have an advantage in making friends with all the little siblings in the bleachers.  My buddy and his irresistible dimples find me with a fresh container of these little pieces of gum that come in cubes.  He asks me for some gum and then hesitates.

“What flavor is it?”
“Mmm, mint.”
“Thpythee mint?”
“Well, not too spicy.  But maybe?”
“Hmmm, I don’t like thpythee mint.”  And he scampers off.

Oh thpythee mint.

I’ll always remember the first day I drove to work after moving to SLO.  As I made my way down a road, aptly named, Tank Farm, I gazed toward the airport and appreciated the herd of cows grazing not far from the runway.  Upon reflection that seems a bit concerning… I’m sure there’s a fence.  Probably.  In any case, it was an idyllic contrast compared to the Cupertino parking lot of my previous life.

It was a bit like the time I got onto our one freeway in the early evening as it had just gotten dark.  As I merged onto the roadway I checked my left mirror and all I saw was darkness.  Pitch black.  A few moments of panic… am I on an offramp?  Where am I?… Oh yeah, I’m in a beautiful small town where the cars don’t pave the roadways.

A few Sundays ago I was headed home from the grocery store, waiting at a traffic light to get onto that same freeway.  The light turns green.  We’re still stopped.  I see a big white F150 truck waiting at the beginning of the onramp.  Impatience rumbles.

What’s the deal?  Why aren’t we driving??…

And then I see it.  Crossing a four lane freeway overpass and then a one lane onramp… a mommy duck and her dozen baby cotton balls.  They hurry across in a little line and then flutter into a patch of grass near the Hampton Inn.

A good reminder to slow down and drink it in.

If you don’t count Princess, Perfect, Piper, Lightning and Sando, this place is chock full of boys.  Boy books on armadillos and boy building games and muddy boy shoes and Star Wars boy toothbrushes.  Now I’m not a big shopper, but I like a sunny afternoon wandering through cute shops looking at girlie stuff just as much as the next girl.  So I didn’t exactly expect a rave response when I floated the following idea while eating barbecue at a lunch place featuring pig decor and oil can pendant lights.

“Hey guys, wanna go to the bathtub store with me after this?”

This was my persuasive attempt at getting some takers to visit the luxe, homemade beauty products store across the street called Lush.

The whining and moaning were piled as high as pulled pork.  Somehow we still made it up the steps and into the shop.

A buffet of expensive, colorful delights greeted us on every table.  The engaging young associate let us dissolve $8 bath bombs in warm water, reveling in fizzy bathing chemistry magic.  We sampled and smelled all kinds of fruity ice cream shaped accoutrement, glittery jams and sparkling jellies.  Nate had dust sprinkling his nose from smelling the many fanciful baubles.  I’d gone in wanting to buy a couple of bath bombs to display in a glass jar in the new bathroom in the barn.  A little something pretty to help erase the ugly memories of incompetent contractors.

I find myself at the cashier’s counter, purchasing $50 worth of bath bombs and gels and other luxuries piled-up by the anti-bathtub store gang that begrudgingly followed me into this Ugh-Nooooo-Mom-this-is-the-worst-idea-ever-why-do-we-always-have-to-only-do-things-you-want-to-do store.  We ended up with three delicious smelling bath bombs I picked out, a “slime” bomb the associate recommended, a two part bomb shaped like a chicken hatching out of an egg, and two things James slipped in.  The front desk associate gave me a sample of Happy Hippy Shower Gel because I like citrus.  Apparently you can take the girl out of Santa Cruz…

So the boys have been reveling in their outrageous $8 baths in the barn.

Last weekend I decided I’d better enjoy one of these luxurious, cost-prohibitive baths in our new barn bathtub before the bath bomb cupboard is bare.  I choose a frothy white scoop of creamsicle bliss.

Meanwhile, as I’m soaking away my worries… Stormy Daniels’ lawyer is photobombing Kellyanne Conway at a DC gala.

The barn bathtub has a stunning view.  It’s luxuriously deep and peaceful and a world away from Star Wars toothbrushes.  I hear something suspicious.  Is that the sound of footsteps slap-slapping up the steps?  Two mischievous little people show-up solely in their little muddy Crocs and hooded towels.

My peace and quiet?

Bathbombed.

When you’re learning Spanish, one of the most defining features is the use of the feminine and masculine, primarily in describing nouns.  Most gringos pick-up on this right away and begin adding “o” to the end of every word.  You know you’ve done it like a million times-o.

I’ve always enjoyed learning the masculine and the feminine and trying to understand the thought process behind it.  Like “el cuchillo,” which means knife.  I can always remember it because boys are kind of violent so knives are masculine.  Now “la cuchara” is a spoon– curvy and girlie and therefore feminine.  Then you have things like “el sostén” which means bra… is masculine.  Go figure.

When I lived in Spain they did the same exact thing, but they thought English is all “tions.”  Operation, translation, imagination… which is kind of funny because every –tion in English is –ción in Spanish.  I guess we all have our foreign language stereotypes.

Yesterday we’re driving down Broad on our way to Nate’s baseball game and the car in front of us just doesn’t seem to know what they want to do.  They have their left turn signal on.  They veer toward the center turning lane and then veer back out.  They slow down and then speed up and then slow down again.  Finally the car turns left and James says, “Keep it moving, Weirdo!”

Nate looks at the driver of the car and determines it’s a lady, “Weirda, Daddy, it’s Weirda.”

When James and I were in college, we had a friend that went by “Jake the Snake.”  Given I’m a Griffindor, or maybe… a Ravenclaw… I was never a fan.  And yet, there’s something about this nickname that really appeals to little boys.  And college sophomores.  I don’t get it.  I guess it just sounds tough.

A few weeks ago Jake had to prepare his most recent oral presentation.  Surprisingly, he chose a subject slightly off the beaten Minecraft Pokémon path: Serpientes.  Or “serpents” as his dad says.  Also known as Spanish for snakes.  This particular dad is also known for loudly ordering ham-ber-gwesas.

Jake the Snake made his entire poster and carefully laid-out his speech.  I was out of town for the week and in the absence of a Mommy crutch, the boys made it happen.  They practiced eye contact, gestures, transitions, appropriate use of visuals.  I got a chance to view a live dress rehearsal via FaceTime.

The day of his presentation, Jacob came home and showed-us his scores and the note from his teacher– 4’s across the board.  Aced it.

I ask Jake how he’s feeling and he says, “Yeah, I’m pretty proud.”

Me, too.