wild*life

When we moved into our neighborhood, almost six years ago, I immediately made a connection with the gal three doors down.  Her name is Stephanie and her boyfriend is Stephen.  Then we met our octogenarian neighbors Martha and Mario.  It was like we’d moved into some alternative matching name world built just for Jaimie and James.

And then Jennifer and Jamie, moved in across the street.  And Nate bought the house a couple of doors down.  And just last month, we completed the perfect “J” trifecta when Justine and Josh moved into Martha and Mario’s house.

Since moving to this street, we’ve always lived next door to a lovely retired couple named Pat and Clarence.

Tonight our Nate casually referred to them as Clat and Plarence.  And then Cat and Plarence.  Jacob has always called them Plat and Clarence.

Last weekend Jakey says to me in a surprisingly appropriate whisper, “Mom, which one is Plat?  I never can remember.”

Maybe we should just call her Claire?

Years ago when James and I lived in Mountain View, we went to the movies almost every weekend.  James loves the movies.  I’ll never forget the time he talked me into going to see The Lord of the Rings.

There was a line to get in.  And I do not want to stereotype, but that line made a significant impression on me.  It was almost entirely made up of overweight, white males with long, scraggly ponytails and bushy beards.  I remember shorts.  Glasses.  Flip flops.  Cell phone holsters.  A lot of in-line snuggling with the one or two other girls in the queue.

After watching what felt like two hours of cinematic decapitations in a forest, I vowed to stay away from this bit of subculture… until I unwittingly stepped right back into it.

Over the last few months, as I’ve mentioned, Jacob has been telling me he loves Star Wars.  And I just could not figure out how they had gotten to him?  Now I know there are essentially two infallible marketing machines for things like this: Classmates and…

Disney.

A few weeks ago I took Jacob to a birthday party for a girl in his class named Juliet.  Once we arrived, we found out he was the only boy invited from school.  I was sitting at a kids table making small talk when I overheard two little girls.

Little girl #1:  “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

Little Girl #2: “OK.”

Little girl #1:  “No, really.  You can’t tell anybody.”

Little Girl #2: “OK.  I won’t tell anybody.”

Little Girl #1: (whispering). “I really like Star Wars.  But don’t tell anybody!  No one can know.”

I got up and left the table.  I’m kidding.

So Star Wars is hot in kindergarten right now.

Since the day after Christmas, Jake has spent most waking moments telling me what he wants for his birthday.  And he has not wavered from “Star Wars Legos.”  Specifically he’s been saying he needs “the bad guy with the white face with red on it.”

So I’ve googled “Star Wars bad guy with white face.”  I’ve shown him Google images on my iPad.  Are you talking about Darth Maul?  No?  We’ve been researching this for weeks and my Internet research powers have failed us.

Until this weekend when I decided to go on a lone mission to the mall to visit the Lego store.  It was a gorgeous day, possibly as nice as The Perfect Day the day before.  And yet, the Lego store was crawling with people like ants on a cupcake.

I park myself in front of the Star Wars Lego display segment and use my Princess Leia powers to discern which box is close to age appropriate, “cool,” and costs less than $80.  I find one that meets my robust ranking system.  But it doesn’t appear to include a “bad guy with a white face with red on it.”  I pick-up other boxes and scan the guys.  Finally I find a box that comes with three Chewbacca guys, but also has a deceptive picture of a bad guy with a white face with red on it.  Jackpot!  That’s my man.  Now what alarming amount of money do you have to shell out to get this guy?

I get out my phone but still come up short.  Now I need two Lego guys.  Do I strike up a conversation with the little boys swarming this area or do I put myself in contact, likely with a Lord of the Rings fan?  A young man in a bright yellow apron is coming my way.  No ponytail, just a giant beard made of Legos hanging down to his belly button.  Kidding again.

I show him the back of the box and ask, in possibly the most five-year-old sentence to leave my mouth toward a stranger, “Who’s this guy ‘n how do I get ’em?”

“I think he’s from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon.  Sorry, we don’t have those yet.”

And I’m back in the game.

I spend the next day on the train back to my Star Wars bad guy research.  I find myself carelessly pouring over a site called Wookieepedia.  I repeat, Wookiepedia.  I figure out that this Star Wars Rebels cartoon plays on a Disney channel (I knew it).  And somehow I find the bad guy is named… The Inquisitor.

That night I am giddy with excitement.  Jake is in bathtime and I pull out my iPad and hold it at a safe distance.  And he confirms: I’ve finally found “the bad guy with a white face with red on it.”

“Only at the end do you realize the power of the Dark Side.”

Last weekend was possibly the most blissful weather in recent memory.  Our “Valentime’s Day” was perfect.  We awoke to a breakfast table piled with little boxes of love and homemade cards.  We had a great morning at swimming lessons and then a tasty lunch in Santa Cruz at burger.  And then we headed up the coast to our favorite tide pool beach where we also encountered two of our very own elephant seals.  They also clearly agreed they had never encountered a more perfect day.

The boys’ favorite part of the day may have been the chocolate loot at breakfast, or snack time at Kelly’s Bakery, but I think it was exploring the beach.  Nate talks me into coming down to the water’s edge to play a game his Dad has made up:

“Mommy, Mommy.  Say la-dee-dee-da.  La-dee-dee-da.  And then when the waves come, ‘Run for your lives!!!  Run for your lives!!!'”  Followed by uproarious giggles and running.

A “Valentime” by Jake.  I’m the striped heart with a ponytail.

Over the course of almost six years of child development experience, it has been interesting, fun, hilarious, and at times, alarming, to witness the process of language development.

The first real example James and I noted was probably when Jake was two, nearing three.  He started peppering each conversation with a well-placed, “Ac-shoe-a-lly.”  As in, “Ac-shoe-a-lly, I want two tweats, not one.”

Then a combo of playground lingo and Marty the zebra from the movie Madagascar prompted an overly healthy use of the exclamation, “What the?!”  Nate is currently right there in the “What The” Zone.  Jake experimented with “What the heck” but I brought the hammer down.

And speaking of the hammer, there was also the short life of “Oh my god” which was beat back to “Oh my gosh” and ultimately became “Oh my heaven.”  We’ll come back to this one in a moment.  I still remember my dad’s angry face the first time he heard me say “Oh my god.”  He was vehemently opposed to this phrase and black tennis shoes.  I was clearly on the precipice of becoming a real hoodlum in those LA Gears.

Last year Jakey started ending a sentence mid-way and then looking at me with his head tilted to the side and his eyebrows up.  He would kind of wave his little hand like a traffic cop, expecting me to read his mind and finish the sentence.  This was a really funny phase…

There was also a long stretch of “No Nate’s.”  Exclamations really.  I heard it hundreds of times and it made me wish there was a lifetime counter that would tally the number of times Jake will utter “Noooo Nate!”

And the “blah blah blah” phase that happened during stories involving conversations between two people.

And I almost forgot the phase where he would prompt agreement to his every suggestion by ending his proposals with “Yeah?” and an influential yes nodding of the head to try and get you to nod along with him.  “I get two tweats instead of one today, yeah?  Yeah?”  (lots of nodding). You can easily find yourself mimicking the head nodding and agreeing with something if you are only half-listening.

Going back to our Yosemite holiday trip, our four-year-old-friend Eleanor introduced us to a new phrase.  Everything she said usually had something to do with “her thithter” Eve.  It was darling.  And just like that, Nate lost his name and is now referenced almost entirely as “my brother.”  Lately it’s: “My brother slapped me with his towel in the tummy.  My brother ripped his Valentimes Day dragon mask.  My brother got the walls wet with the squirt gun in the bathtub.”

And then two weekends ago, Jacob and I were weeding in the new backyard so he could earn back his movie privilege.  Unfortunately it appears that when you buy bark chip mulch, you are also purchasing the added benefit of thousands of baby clover.  So Jake and I are picking clover and we find, get this: two four-leaf clovers and… wait for it… a five-leaf clover.  I have been searching for this my entire life and here it all happens in one crazy moment of bliss.

And Jake exclaims, ” OMG, Lady!

O.

M.

G.”

When JJ was three, my friend Jamie told me her son Jack (just five months older than Jake), loved Legos and could spend hours entertaining himself with these little plastic bricks.  At the time, we had had a fire truck for about a year that was super complex to put together and once it had been disassembled, impossible to recreate without the instructions.

Two years went by.  We got some Duplos (bigger Legos for littler fingers).  They were met with a “meh”.  The Lego gifts kept coming and I was a bit torn.

On the one hand, Legos seem like the quintessential “learning” toy.  Chock a block with problem-solving opportunities, creativity, and possibility.  Hours of mommy time?  Too good to be true?

Maybe my kids just aren’t “Lego kids” I thought to myself.

Which on the other hand… might be OK.  Have you ever seen people’s houses that are “into Legos?”  Giant bins full of thousands of bricks.  Lego sculptures in display cases as works of art.  And have you stepped on Legos in the dark?  Rainbow pieces of glass.  But instead of stabbing into your feet they just stick to them so you can stumble around in the dark, stabbing yourself repeatedly until you scrape them off on the floor vent so as to melt in your heating ducts.

So I could go either way.

Currently there’s this ad for milk on the radio that is absolutely aimed at our demographic.  The man has a deep Superman-esque voice and states, “This is you, from the future.  That’s right Oliver, you’re only five-and-half now, but eventually you’ll grow up to be me: a pro baseball player and Minecraft champion with a massive house made out of Lego bricks.  Just like you hoped.  You could get sweet muscles and amazing teeth, and hair so shiny everyone will copy your hair style and you’ll be like: ‘Stop copying me you guys…‘” (excerpt from www.gotmilk.com > radio ads > “Oliver”).  James and I think this commercial is hilarious.  Nate and Jake just look at us and blink.

And just like the ad, Jacob turned five-and-a-half and he finally “got” Legos.  He could “read” the instructions and put together elaborate helicopters and some kind of bad guy ducky “vehicle” I encountered last night.  The kid can barely follow two-step instructions to hang-up his towel and put his pajamas on, but when it comes to Legos, he can follow fifty-three steps unassissted, resulting in an impressive Batcopter.

At Christmas I tried helping him and I have to say, the instructions are slightly addictive.  It was like a satisfying treasure hunt involving tiny Barbie earring-sized elements that you stack and stack until you have something big with “boosters.”  The boys are all about boosters… and “jet packs.”

But now he’s getting Lego fever.  He tells me he loves Star Wars.  He’s never seen Star Wars.  He tells me Stuart needs to come over with his giant bin of Legos.

Me:”Why does he need to bring his Legos?  Don’t we have enough Legos?”

Jake: “No, we need way more Legos.  So we can build a LEGO LAND.”  Picture sweeping visionary arm gesture.

Me: “I’m sure we have enough for a Lego Land.”

Jake: “No, no.  We really only have enough for like… a Lego State.”

During the majority of last year, we were crazy for Wild Kratts.  Addicted.  Obsessed.  Though I try to avoid that particularly overutilized word.  Magazines these days are filled with women obsessed with every new latte, lipstick and song they come across.

Anyway, for those of you not steeped in the cartoon culture of today, Wild Kratts is about two real-life Canadian brother animal experts that turn into cartoon versions of themselves and then solve creature problems in their creature power suits.  Click here for a more in-depth refresher from last July.

Although Jake’s craving for Wild Kratts has diminished, he is no less interested in animals.  I’m convinced his friend Stuart instantly rose to best friend status when we caught site of him on Halloween in an impressive homemade Peregrine falcon costume.

Over the years, I’ve questioned Jake’s animal knowledge.  I’ve incredulously eye-rolled.  Pigeon milk?  Peregrine falcons in our very own front yard?  That’s clearly a serval and that’s clearly a caracal?  Have I ever been right when challenging the animal knowledge of this five-year-old?

In a word?  No.  Whenever Jake proves me wrong, I hear this song in my head: Another one bites the dust.  And another one gone, and another one gone.  Another one bites the dust…

Over the holidays, I was reminded of a Sunday last August when I had brunch plans and James took the boys to Happy Hollow.  Serendipitously, the traveling summer animal show was on stage, only it had been renamed from the previous year and now involved more audience participation.  This new show was titled, “Are You Smarter than a Lemur?”

Unfortunately, I missed the entire thing, but James’ retelling went something like this:

We’re sitting in the audience and they ask for two audience volunteers to participate in an animal quiz.  Without hesitation, Jacob raises his hand and pushes his way toward the front.  Historically shy when faced with this type of opportunity, James is super surprised.

As luck would have it, Jake is chosen.  He’s matched up against a little girl they both estimate to be older.  Although approaching the cusp of five-and-a-half, after they each write their names, the odds don’t look good.  The contestants pet a real alligator, and a skunk.  They put a lemur on the little girl’s shoulders, but it immediately leaps onto Jake.

As he said to me a few months ago when I uncovered a baby salamander in the front flower bed, “Mom, Mom.  Give it to me… Give it to me.  I’m an animal lover.”  Clearly the lemur must have sensed this.

Back to the show… Fortunately, Jake has mastered the ability to legibly write his name, but back then, that’s as literate as he gets.

There are a series of multiple choice animal questions.  He gets his first question right.  She gets her first question wrong.  He gets the next question right.  James sees the host is attempting to “rig” it so the kids will tie.  Jacob brings it home with a definitive answer for the win.  It’s a landslide.  Another one bites the dust.

The picture James texts me tells it all.

During our Christmas break, we made our annual pilgrimage to Yosemite.  There was more snow than last year, but that’s not saying much.  I’ll have to try and capture some of the highlights of that little vacation in another post.  In any case, Alesia was entertaining the four little monkeys and they were playing animals or doctor or vets in the wild and I hear Alesia and Jake challenging one another.  If you know these two, it was probably inevitable.  Scratch that.  Entirely inevitable.  Alesia is a senior executive at a financial institution.  Jake thinks he’s a senior executive at any institution.

Alesia claims that some porcupines can shoot their quills.  Jake disagrees.  We have no Internet connection and so the facts cannot be confirmed.

Charles, Alesia’s significant other, comes up from the ground floor and Alesia turns to him as the expert on porcupines. (??).  “Charles, aren’t there some porcupines that shoot their quills?”

“Mmm, no, I don’t believe so.  Pretty sure I just saw that last week on an episode of Wild Kratts.”

And another one gone, and another one gone…. Another one bites the dust.

PS: When Jake was asked to recall the Happy Hollow story he tells me, “Uhhh… all I remember is that I’m smarter than a lemur.”

We are currently eyeball deep into the realm of tattle-taling and copying.  Each day is filled with countless opportunities to discuss various strategies for dealing with tattlers, dealing with one’s inclinations to tattle, and the concepts of justice and injustice inherent in tallying tattles.

Our elementary school has a new campaign which originated from the modern crusade against bullying.  By the way, Jacob believes that all graffiti and tagging is done by “naughty bullies.”  We are definitely anti naughty bullies.

So this campaign consists of three words: Stop, Walk and Talk.  It involves teaching kids how to deal with being bullied, bothered or teased.  First you use words and gestures to tell the person to stop.  Then you walk away if the problem continues.  Finally, you talk to an adult if the issue is still not resolved.

Tonight at dinner we were discussing the behavior chart in Maestra Patiño’s class.  It consists of colors that range from highest to lowest: morado (purple), azul (blue), gris (grey), verde (green), amarillo (yellow), anaranjado (orange), and rojo (red).  Every day each student starts on verde and then has to sube (raise) or baja (lower) their name based on instructions from the teacher during the course of the day for good and bad behaviors.  As far as we can tell, Jakey has done a pretty good job of not falling below amarillo.  Anything lower and I think you get e-mails and other unsavory communications from adults of authority.  Jacob is very clear that we do not wish to receive such communications.

So tonight we’re discussing the kindergarten behavior chart and he tells us about a girl in his class and how she’s been on rojo a lot lately.  He couldn’t really describe exactly what behaviors have surely created a level of angst in her parent’s e-mail inbox, but I’m sure it must be pretty disruptive.  Apparently she does a lot of tattling, but any role Jacob may have in provoking said tattles is clearly murky.  Sounds like she may be the recipient of unwanted chasing.  In any case we’re discussing the Stop, Walk and Talk method and Jake says, “She doesn’t believe in Stop, Walk and Talk.”  She being the unnamed girl on rojo.

“She told me she thinks it’s a trick against kids… to make us tattle.”

James and I both choked on our dinner while trying to maintain a look of mature contemplation.  She sounds feisty, doesn’t she?  Jake better watch his tale.

For some reason the new year rolled around and I got a bee in my blog bonnet.  The look of this blog is sooooo 2009.  We all know first impressions are everything and as I’ve heard the girls in full make-up and 4-inch nails say on the soccer field, “You’ve gotta look good to play good.”

Clearly you don’t have to talk good…

And so, I’ve spent a number of hours doing research on WordPress and free themes and logging-into our website host’s website and after hours of live chats and trying to back-up my blog, my confidence began to fade and I remembered the Great Blogtastrophe of 2010.  So then I started to rack my brain on what computer experts do I know?… I’ve really let this area of my network lapse.  Unfortunately I no longer work hand-in-hand with systems engineers teaching me about DRAM and instructing me to type pipe grep.

And then it hit me, my cousin is known for his computer prowess.  I think he was rumored to be a teenage hacker— and I say that with the utmost respect and awe.  And so I’ve hatched a plan and am putting it out into the universe.

Bryan— I have an offer for you.  If you will back-up my Bluehost hosted blog and upgrade it from WordPress 2.2 to WordPress 4.1 so I can use fancy free themes, I will make you a giant batch of mouthwarmers and deliver them to your door.  You could probably do this in your sleep… and meanwhile you could be enjoying your own homemade batch of delicious mouthwarmers as early as February 1st.

Hopefully my loyal fan will pass on this message…