wild*life

Jake is headed into his seventh week of camp at the Y, and let me just say, it’s clear this is exactly what a six-year-old is meant to be doing.  Not sitting still and perfecting his ability to compose opinion pieces.

Jacob has leapt into Splash Camp every other week, alternated with Lego Robo-Sports Camp (where he built and programmed a Lego robot to play baseball and wrestle), Baking Desserts Camp and Discovery Camp.  I know, I know.  I lost you at Lego Robo-Sports Camp… I couldn’t even understand that entire week’s worth of dinnertime conversations.  Miss Veronica is his favorite counselor– probably because she calls him Jakey Cakes.

We’ve had great fun singing A Roosta Sha and I said a Boom Chick-A Boom.  It seems camp songs have remained unchanged for the last 20+ years– I wasn’t aware there had been such little innovation in the genre of camper carols.  And now, that’s about to change…

Jake has taught us a lot of new I said a Boom Chick-A Boom versions we weren’t familiar with like:

Car Style: I said a Vroom Chick-A Vroom and
Janitor Style: I said a Broom Chick-A Broom

I was pretty proud of myself when I came up with:

Egyptian Style: I said a Tomb Chick-A Tomb
Weaver Style: I said a Loom Chick-A Loom and
Mommy Style: I said a Womb Chick-A Womb.

James whipped out some pretty impressive versions tonight including:

Indiana Jones Style: I said a Doom Chick-A Doom and
Astronaut Style: I said a Moon Chick-A Moon.

And then Jake sings what can only be deemed The Song of the Summer:

Cereal Style!:
I said a Spoon Chick-A Spoon.
I said a Spoon Chick-A Spoon.
I said a Spoon Chick-A Spoon.
I said a Spoon Chick-A Spoon.
I said a Spoon Chick-A Rock-A Chick-A Rock-A Chick-A Spoon.
I said a Spoon Chick-A Rock-A Chick-A Rock-A Chick-A Spoon.

Oh the spoons… 

Over spring break, we got a rude and unwanted surprise when the director of our preschool announced they were closing their doors.  As the oldest preschool in San Jose, established in 1907, it was heartbreaking to see the anger, disappointment and loss this event represented to the teachers, students, parents and community.  In the end, our biggest disappointment was losing one last year with a group of truly personable teachers that built an undeniable connection with our boys.  Miss Dulce, Miss Ayde, Miss Maria, Miss Hong, Miss Suzy, Miss Gloria, Miss Letti, Miss Chethi, Miss Amy, Miss Pauli, and Miss Minerva and Mr. Neo.  Such a special group of teachers and staff.  Not only were the teachers memorable, but so was the outdoor space.  The school had several acres of amazing playground space that was truly unique for a preschool.  No one will ever really know what exactly happened, ironically, that outdoor space may have ultimately been the downfall given the allure of rising real estate prices.  Ultimately we had to find a new “home away from home” for Nate’s final year of preschool.

So we jumped from the non-denominational Catholic preschool to the non-denominational Jewish preschool associated with one of the oldest synagogues in San Jose, established in 1861.

The first week was tough.  Nate was definitely conflicted about his “old school” versus his “new school.”  After the first day I asked him if he liked the outdoor space at his new school and he declared, “It is totally not awesome.”

But then he made a friend.  And to our surprise, or maybe not, his new friend was at least a year older than him… and is name was Jacob.

Today the school’s director, Ms. Barb, greeted us by noting how fast Nate has made friends.  Now his pals include Jacob, Colin, Harrison, and one of his best buddies from his “old” school, Bennett.

Nate tells us he’s going to speak three languages, just like Jake.  Jake is focused on English, Spanish and the source of many of his favorite things including dragons and potstickers, Chinese.  In contrast, Nate is proud to be learning English, Spanish and “He-bwew.”

They had a birthday celebration a few weeks ago and Nate declared the beverage (white grape juice) di-custing.  But he liked the “hollow.”

Back around Christmas time, the boys spent a lot of time plotting the construction, design, and merits of “bone rocket ships.”  Back then James says to me, “You need to write a blog about bone rocket ships!  It’s so funny, I don’t want to forget it.”

Unfortunately, I had nothin’…  Bone rocket ships?  I think they were inspired by our then acute obsession with dragons and vikings and flying.  And now here it is, captured for posterity in a questionable attempt to bridge the 6-month evolution of our household’s dialectal comings and goings.

Most recently, I’ve noticed Nate is a liberal fan of the word destroy.  Meanwhile Jake is more about what is invincible and post to.  We spend a lot of time discussing the strongest materials in the world.  We’ve had trouble finding items that can survive hot lava.  Though the philosophical debate rages on regarding the strengths and weaknesses of a hot lava sword and whether it’s post to turn into stone.  This week he’s convinced acid may be superior to hot lava.  How can we ever truly know?

Historically, our discussions have centered primarily around jet packs, jet shoes, boosters and mega-mega blasters.  I only vaguely claim to know what most of these are.  Jake’s been talking about many of them since he was two.  In kindergarten, he started telling me about his “blay-blays.”  These are all one-of-a-kind Lego tops that he builds and then spins.  We admire their merits based on three primary criteria: 1) Ease of spinning (some require formal training), 2) Spinning beauty and/or pattern and 3) Ability to win battles against other spinning lego contraptions.  When I asked Jake to write down what exactly he was saying, it appears they’re actually “blade-bladz.”  The ‘z’ was backward, probably as it givz it more street cred.

Meanwhile, Nate is especially keen on infinity.  I feel like I still mentally struggle with the concept of infinity.  I mean, of course I understand it, but I still find the idea of a string of numbers that never ends to be… well, a bit unnerving.  Not Nate.  He understands infinity at his very four-year-old core.  Yesterday it was so hot.  Nate tells me, “I think it’s 90 today, or infinity.”

“Really?  Those are the two choices?  Which do you think it actually is?”

“90.”

He’s so confident about his grasp on infinity that now he’s just casually joking about it…

The other night we’re in the bottom bunk, where most philosophical conversations and discussions of the universe, the origins of life, and other scientific and supernatural discourse takes place… naturally, and Nate tells me:

“Lucas from my old school says goo goo dots is bigger than infinity.”  Lucas has been Nate’s best friend at preschool for the last three years.

“Goo goo dots?”

“Yes.  But I told him infinity is bigger.  I know infinity is definitely bigger than goo goo dots.  The numbers go on forever and ever.”

If I was feeling uneasy about infinity, goo goo dots have just pushed me over the edge.

This morning was a sad, sad morning in the Fucillo family.  We returned home yesterday from several fun-filled days in Disneyland and Pasadena.  All seemed well, however, when James checked on Boobooboos this morning, she had joined the great big goldfish in the sky.

Back in January, poor little Boobooboos came down with the popeye.  That was the medical diagnosis provided by Dr. James when one of her eyes bugged-out to the size of a marble.  Before I left for my annual trip to Vegas, I said my goodbyes and told her I loved her.

Miraculously, Dr. James nursed little Boobooboos back to health.  Her appetite returned and the popeye retreated.  She was back to her happy-go-lucky, tail-wagging self.

But over the last few weeks, we knew something was wrong.  She had stopped eating again and was not greeting us each morning by splashing around.  Last night she swam down into her favorite little corner and went to sleep with the fishes… forever.

We held a little funeral for Boobooboos this morning in the half bath.  I had to stay at the kitchen table as I didn’t want that to be my last mental image of her.  Technically she was Nate’s fish, but really she was everybody’s favorite.  After a good cry on the floor behind the laundry basket, Nate joined us back at the breakfast table.

Jacob made sure he received more Honey Nut Cheerios than he had, and even more notably, the special “tall” spoon.

Rest in Peace little Boobooboos.  We love you.

When I was a kid, we had two sets of silverware: a pewter set which was considered the “nice” silverware, and another set which was primarily reserved for eating cereal.

I’ll never forget the day my parents procured the casual “cereal-eating” flatware.  It was a Sunday morning at the Santa Cruz flea market down at the Drive-in.  “Oooh, look at all this great mis-matched cutlery.”  And thus we ended up with a drawer of random flatware.

These days, this would be considered trendy and eco-friendly.  However, to pre-teen me, I really couldn’t think of anything more nauseating than eating off of something associated with the words flea and market.  My brother developed a propensity for the one and only real silver spoon to make it into the flea market purchase.  He liked it because it was heavy.  I’ve never ever eaten with that spoon as its natural tarnish appeared to be just another suspicious sign of its origins.  I immediately reverted to only eating cereal with our hand-me-down long-handled iced tea spoons from my grandmother’s house.

Somehow I inherited said favorite iced-tea spoons and they are now a staple when it comes to eating cereal in my own grown-up house.  And of course, the boys have found the one and only spoon that doesn’t match any of the others and is thus the most coveted spoon in the drawer.  It’s a Japanese, stainless steel spoon with a bit of a 1960’s motif on the handle.  At our house, it’s known as the “tall” spoon.  Apparently Nate has compared it to all other spoons and it came out the tallest.

Every morning there is a veritable rush to the breakfast table to try and get the tall spoon first.  Lord help us if it is still dirty from the day before, or hidden in the steamy depths of the dishwasher.  We’ve had to institute a daily taking-of-turns with this special spoon as the Spoon Wars have resulted in countless tears and threats of removal from the Super Hero team.

This week James talked Nate into a giant sterling silver serving spoon.  Initially Nate was intrigued, as he thought it was made of golden treasure.  But after a few bites, he recognized that it just isn’t practical.

How will we put an end to the Spoon Wars?  A truce?  A treaty?  An unfortunate accident with the garbage disposal?  What other choice do we have but to… dare I say… start scouring the flea market?

I think I may have mentioned that I have a bit of an OCD streak.  I do things like clean-up my entire house before going on vacation… in part so I can come home to a tranquil, clean house.  And in part because there is some little part of me that wants to know everything was in it’s place when my house burned down.  I know, crazy time.

I’m convinced it’s genetic.  I inherited this little quirk from Granddad.  He’s constantly tidying and for decades we have fondly nicknamed him Señor Tidy.  I found it particularly amusing when my mom shared with me that apparently my brother gets noticeably grumpy when his house is messy, too.  I don’t know how Grandma gets the outlaws to tattle on their significant others, but this is one of Grandma’s most notable strengths.

I do admit, if you want to put me into a particularly irritated mood, lock me in James’ home office slash shoe closet slash Ebay distribution center.  Crazy time.

On this subject, Grandma recently reminded me of the time when Jacob was still two years old.  Angela was babysitting and Jacob went on an audible tirade, complete with finger pointing at her neighbor’s yard sale, “That house is SO messy!”

Now to be clear, we were also recently asked to describe Jake and whether he is organized or all over the place.  Given we haven’t seen his Wild Kratts lunchbox since the second week of kinder and have lost count on missing navy blue hoodies, we had to go with option two.  That said, Jake appreciates a nice clutter-free environment.  He was really the only one to appreciate my recent Spring Break pantry cleaning and reorganization project.  Quite complimentary, I must say.  He visited Grandma’s and asked her why her cupboards were so messy… his cupboards are “clean and organized.”  Grandma still seems to be stewing over this little anecdote— Jake must have delivered it in his most unfiltered, Grandma-esque way?

Over Spring Break, I also cleaned the garage… again.  I am sick and tired of my role as Chief Garage Cleaner as I’ve found exactly zero people (except maybe Señor Tidy) appreciate my hard work and there is no effort to help maintain the improved state.  I mean, I almost died last time.

Despite all that, I spent another day cleaning-up the garage so as to make room for our fleet of riding toys.  And just after I complete my project, and tell all the boys they aren’t allowed to enter the garage without my EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION, James shuts the door, which we’ve been raising and lowering manually for several years, and SPROING: the cables break, springs fly, and the garage door is stuck in the down position— perfectly preserving and protecting the beautiful organized bliss I have just created.  Plus my pallet of leftover landscaping stone is still blocking the “human entrance.”

I live happily for several weeks knowing the garage has been preserved in an orderly state.  But, last week our new garage door was installed with two fancy clickers that work.  And the new door is perfectly silent so the Mess Makers can sneak in there utterly undetected.

On Saturday I got this text from James while I was with the boys at swimming lessons:

Garage door openers?

Hello?

Nate is undeniably edible.  I’m not exactly sure what it is, but people look at him and they just want to eat him up.  When he was little, I thought it was probably his blond cherubic curls and those little bee-stung lips.  Or maybe that chubby belly sticking out over the waistband of his diaper.  But even now, his curls are gone and his little tummy has flattened out and he is still just as yummy as ever.

He has spent much of his childhood exclaiming, “No eat me!” in countless situations and settings.  I’m sure it’s unsettling to always be on high alert as some sort of blond-haired, amber-eyed appetizer.  I do distinctly remember one time when he was two, he laid flat on his back on the kitchen floor, pulled-up his little shirt and giggled, “Eat my belly.”  My three most favorite words.

For years I’ve been trying to decide exactly which of my favorite foods he looks like.  Dumplings?  Marshmallows?  Maybe shortcake or sourdough bread?  Powdered-sugar doughnuts filled with vanilla custard?  Definitely some sort of warm sweet roll confection.

Last week at school, we received an incident report for Nate.  Nathaniel never receives incident reports unless he is the unfortunate bystander of some sort of accidental violence or calamity.  At the dinner table, I looked at the chubby little crook of his elbow and there was a nasty red mark of someone’s entire toddler-sized dental impression.

“Nate, what happened?  Did someone bite you?”

“Yeah, Ahana bit my arm.”

“What happened?  Did you do something to make her bite you?”

“No, I was just sitting in circle time and she bit me.”

“She just chomped down on you?  What did you do?”

“I cried and told the teacher.”

I admit, I was pretty skeptical of this story.  Was he rewriting history so as to edit out the part where he snatched her toy before she clamped down so forcefully?  I asked Miss Chethi to provide more context the next morning.  Turns out Nate was in fact minding his own business at circle time and this little girl just leaned down and firmly bit down on his little eclair of an arm.  Miss Chethi couldn’t tell what was happening until she saw Nate’s panic stricken face and came to his rescue.

As I’ve said, there is something about Nate that just makes him edible.  Ahana was clearly just hungry.

Someone get that little girl a snack.

When I was a kid, my little brother idolized He-Man.  We would shout, “By the power of Graaaaay Skull!”  And ride around on pretend Battle Cats and fight Skeletor.  On more than one occasion I would do something to make him cry.  By accident, of course.  And whenever that would happen, in order to avoid getting in trouble, I would give him my best pep talk: “C’mon Geoff, He-Man doesn’t cry.”  And he would suck up his tears and my sins went undetected as he did his best to emulate the body-building, blond-bobbed bravery of his favorite super hero.

I used to feel guilty about using gender stereo-typed tactics to avoid getting in trouble, but now I just like to think of it as my early years of influencing without authority…

So, somewhere in the first few months of kindergarten, Jacob started his own “Superhero Tim.”  That’s pronounced Team in Spanish.  He immediately began recruiting members and assigning secret identities.

WARNING:  Nobody is to mention that they know anything about this Superhero team or who is on it.  I have purposefully left out most personal identifiers.  I mistakenly brought it up at a birthday party as a way of making small talk with the parents of one of the little girls who was fortunate enough to be “chosen.”  Jake was so upset that I’d blown their cover that he cried and I could barely get him to forgive me, even with cupcakes and a bounce house at my disposal.

Here’s the breakdown:

Superhero Identity: Thunderbird
Position:  Omnipotent Captain and Leader
Powers: Controls fire
Weapons/Special Possessions: Swords with indestructible ends, fire mega-mega blaster that shoots fire bullets that put enemies to sleep, car, jet and motorcycle with four wheels

Superhero Identity: Cheetah Boy
Position:  Trusty Sidekick
Powers: Super fast; can run forever (unlike normal cheetahs)
Weapons/Special Possessions: Jet, car with booby traps, a motorcycle with robot feet instead of wheels, guns with speeding, sleep-bullets

Superhero Identity: Super Nature
Position:  Team Mom… I mean Member
Powers: Queen of nature; can control nature
Weapons/Special Possessions: Hover board, mega-mega blaster, force field; nature is her weapon

Superhero Identity: Armor Cat
Position:  Thunderbird’s Father
Powers: Indestructible body
Weapons/Special Possessions: Hover board, mega-mega blaster, shield, invisible dagger

Other members of the team include:
Water Girl (girl from the bounce house birthday party)
Black Jaguar Boy (aka best friend from school who was a Peregrine falcon for Halloween)
Rock Girl (Black Jaguar Boy’s Mom)
Crystal Girl (long-time female best friend)
Music Girl (was Little Red Riding Hood in this year’s play at school)

The omnipotent, dictatorial captain and leader spends much of his time, of late, creating lists of who is on the team and who is off.  If you don’t do what the leader says or give him what he wants, he uses his powers to threaten and/or remove you from the team.  Sometimes he crosses your name off the list, or puts you on the “Bad Giz (Guys) List,” or underlines all his favorites and strikes your name or erases it.  All of this power is unfortunately over-effective with Cheetah Boy, who will melt into a puddle of powerless spandex if he is taken off the list.

I’ve been coaching Cheetah Boy not to let Thunderbird control him with these mind games.  Pssst, Cheetah Boy… how ’bout we start our own super hero team?  I bet we could get He-Man!… you know, he never cries…

There is an illustrated Super Hero Tim book around here somewhere.  In the meantime, a couple snapshots of the latest lists:

God Giz Tim (Good Guys Team)/Bad Giz Tim (Bad Guys Team)

Lest (List); I had to add Nate back and double-underline him in order to get him in the car on Sunday… apparently Super Nature’s powers are ineffective on Cheetah Boy.