wild*life

This is Spike.  Spike is a praying mantis.  Spike is Jacob’s class pet.  Jacob’s classmate Olivia caught him at her house.  Spike eats live flies and crickets.  Spike is WAY bigger than when this picture was taken.  I find myself worrying about where Spike’s next meal will come from.

It started a few weekends ago.  A fly was buzzing around our living room and Jake assigned me a mission: Catch that fly for Spike.

We spent several hours trying to nab that fly in our plastic bug jar.  Spirited flies are much harder to catch than you’d think.  I prefer dehydrated, discouraged flies.  But not too dehydrated or discouraged.  That’s the realm of despondent. Keeping a spirited fly alive for two days is tough.  Keeping a despondent fly alive through the weekend is downright demoralizing.  And Spike doesn’t eat dead flies.

So two Sundays ago, my dehydrated fly catch didn’t make it through the night.  I had to dump him in the bushes at school.  Spike had gone days without eating.  Olivia’s mom will bring pet store crickets if things are really desperate, but why go to Petco when the world is full of free flies?  And what about the thrill of the chase?  Catching flies has become my new weekend pastime.  I’m purposefully leaving the back door open so as to let a fly into my house.

After the burial in the bushes, I left the boys at school and was working from home.  Suddenly, it was like my spidey sense activated.  What’s that sound?  Is that a fly?  My eyes darted around and then zeroed in as it buzzed the control tower.  Breakfast for Spike…

I am Mr. Miyagi.

I was so excited to get to school that afternoon and redeem myself from my Sunday night failure.  I took my prized fly to show Miss Amy.  Jacob taught me to transfer it into a plastic bag, put the plastic bag into the praying mantis enclosure, shake the fly out, remove the bag, and then quick shut the lid.

Spike is very big.  Spike is very still.  He looks a lot like a twig.  My unsuspecting fly buzzed around, desperately looking for a way out.  He flew right under the twig and then, SNAP!  Spike grabbed him with his flamingo-leg arms.  It happened so fast I whooped in surprised excitement and scared poor, unsuspecting Nate.

After this undeniable accomplishment, I caught another smaller fly.  But overnight, that fly mysteriously vanished from our Breakfast for Spike jar.  It was either a magic fairy disguised as a fly, or it squeezed through a tiny air hole so small that water droplets won’t go through, or there’s Nate.  He claims ignorance so I guess we’re going with magic fairy.  Of course after all of this skillful success, Jacob has now upped the ante and invented a new hobby for me: Catching crickets.

So far we’ve tried three versions of wikiHow cricket traps.  We tried the newspaper trap.  We tried the soda bottle trap but with an agave syrup bottle.  We tried the soda bottle trap but with a real two liter soda bottle (That trap required us to have root beer floats two nights in a row.  Maybe my favorite trap.).  We tried adding a light to the soda bottle trap.  The only traps left to try are the toilet paper roll trap, the loaf of bread trap, and the duct tape trap.  We may have to try the lighted crate trap, but that one looks like a bit of a project.

Jake is now losing faith in my cricket trapping skills and trying to sell me on the Petco trap.

But I know better than to walk into that one…

Yesterday the worst thing happened.  Nate said yellow.  And then when I asked him to say it again, just to be sure, he said yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow.

OK, maybe not the worst thing that could have happened yesterday, but still… salt in the wound.

The second to last weekend in May, we took a weekend trip down to SLO town.  That’s San Luis Obispo.  You say the ‘s’ in Luis.  This isn’t Missouri, this is the territory formerly known as Mejico.

One of my all time favorite things to do is to take the boys to play in the creek that runs through the middle of town.  Two trips ago we ended up with two boys in their skivvies, covered in mud.  I let them eat ice cream and it ran all the way down Nate’s leg into his Croc.  I remember overhearing a bystander watching from above the creek exclaim, “One of them is in diapers!”

After that we learned our lesson and this trip I just put them straight in their swimsuits, rash guards and Crocs.  The water was fairly low, but they still had a great time chasing ducks and trying to catch miniature fish.  Due to our perpetual drought, an “island” has sprung up in the middle of this small creek.  And while the boys were playing on the island, Nate saw a bird and chased after it, as he has done on countless occasions.

Suddenly, he was being dive bombed from above.  Two birds attacked out of nowhere.  I’m told the adults nearby did not come to the rescue of this three-year-old, but instead ran for cover.  Unfortunately, I missed the whole thing as I was sitting further down in the shade behind a tree.  I have had the pleasure of hearing Nate retell this story several times.  It’s a classic.  “I was chasing da biwrdie on da gwound and den one biwrdie swooped down and pecked my hand.  Da udder one pecked me on da head.”

A few weeks later, I’m flying solo with the kiddos at the kiddie pool.  I make them promise me they’ll sit on the side as I make a mad dash to the bathroom.  When I get back, Nate tells me he threw Jacob’s goggles up in the air and now they’re lost.

“So tell me what happened?”

“I trew dem in da air and now dare gone.”

“They must be around here somewhere.  Let’s look around.”

“Do you tink a biwrdie swooped down and taked dem?”

“No, probably not.”

“Yeah.  I tink I trew dem in da air and a biwrdie taked dem!”

This is Nate’s World.  In his world, this is not only the most logical explanation, it’s also highly probable.  Fortunately a little birdie told me to check under the pool chair.

So last night I’m in the bottom bunk with both boys telling them another story about my cats when I was a kid.  Nate says, “My neck is buwrning.  We didn’t put sunscream on today.  I tink my neck is buwrned.”

I look under his chin where he says it hurts, “Hmmm.  Looks like maybe something bit you.”

Wide-eyed, “An ant?”

“Uh, no.  Probably not an ant.”

And then he says, as serious as can be, “A wolf?”

In Nate’s World, a wolf could bite you on the neck and you might not notice till bedtime.

Now and then I find myself daydreaming and in the midst of these daydreams, hitting upon a million dollar idea that is going to make me rich.  I’ve read a fair amount about innovation and staring off into space is foundational.  That said, intellectual property management is also foundational and so clearly I’m not going to record my ideas here as I don’t want you stealing my phone headset management or soccer shinguard brilliance.

Nonna is my chief innovation consultant.  She has a fine-tuned sense of what could make it big and turn into a perpetual annuity.  Crazed Christmas shoppers are a critical target audience.  In contrast, my mind gravitates toward smaller niche markets and often mundane problem-solvers.  For example, I just found out that my brother’s college friend’s parents invented the pump bottle.  As in every time you pump soap into your hand at the sink they hear cha-ching, cha-ching and money washes right down your drain and into their bank account.

Another example is one of our neighbors.  She’s into tattoos.  So she invented a giant Band-aid-like bandage that you can use to cover that enormous Old English text you’ve indelibly placed across your shoulder blades until it heals.  I can almost hear the wheels in Nonna’s head spinning right now.

And that finally brings me to my point.  Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I LOVE spray-on sunscreen.  LOVE it.  You can put it on in the blink of an eye.  It provides almost perfect coverage.  You don’t have to rub it in.  You’re never left with giant white patches all over you, or big hand marks across your sunburned midriff.  Your hands aren’t left permanently sticky and waterproofed, despite using the pump-bottle soap five times (cha-ching, cha-ching).

There is only one thing that would make spray-on sunscreen better.  (Well, later on in this story there may be two.).  That one thing?  Make it warm.  That’s right: warm.  There must be some way chemical engineers could develop warm aerosol spray.  Or some trick that just makes it feel warm, like adding Tiger Balm.  Warm spray-on sunscreen is the miracle that could silence the insane whining and fidgeting and ridiculous poolside sunscreaming we bear in the name of preventing cancer and premature aging.

So this idea has been percolating.  How can I get the attention of Coppertone?  Or Neutrogena?  What chemical engineers do I know?  The next great advance in sunscreen technology is now.  American consumers cannot wait.

But then, then late last week I was surfing the Facebook when I saw some clip of text warning all parents about the dangers of spray sunscreen.  I couldn’t bear to click through.  Don’t let innocent children breathe it in.  The FDA.  Blah blah blah.  Hopefully it’s just some dust-up on social media.  Nothing to be alarmed about.  I always tell my kids to hold their breath anyway and rub it on their faces with my hands.  That incident when we turned the floor of our Hawaiian terrace into a dangerous Slip ‘n Slide over the course of five days via spray-on sunscreen?  Totally coincidence.  What’s next?  Hairspray?

Then we got a stern letter from preschool saying we must bring in lotion sunscreen to replace any poison they’ve been unknowingly spraying on our precious children.  And *poof,* my million dollar idea has now gone up in smoke.

Scratch that: spray.

One of the most fun things about 3-year-old Nate is that he still says funny things.  There’s nothing better than hanging around with an English as a First Language learner.

A few weeks back when the World Cup started, he “watched” a couple of games with me.  As usual, he had a lot of questions.  Most of his questions centered around which guys were the blue guys and the green guys and the white guys.  I frequently find myself in public places like the snack bar at the swimming pool putting cream cheese on bagels and discreetly explaining “the white guys” on TV.  During the World Cup his questions mostly revolved around what they were wearing, “Why they have to wear unicorns?  Why you don’t wear unicorns for your soccer games?”

Around the same time we went to visit Nonna and Papa and spent an afternoon in their pool.  Nate mostly spent time sitting on the edge with his toesies in the water.  At one point he got ahold of a boogie board and put it under his feet while he sat on the side.  And then he proclaimed, “I’m surfing… on a websiiiite!”  Do we say that?  Who says that?

When I was in eighth grade I remember sitting in Dr. Matlack’s chair as he removed my braces.  The key question I asked as he was fitting me for my retainers, “Am I going to have to wear these when I’m a grandma?”  I guess I’ve always been a long-term thinker.  He says to me, “Do you want straight teeth when you’re a grandma?”

“After these two years of hell?  Clearly.”  Of course I didn’t say that.  I was a total goodie-two-shoes.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to wear them when you’re a grandma.”

And just like when he was a baby, Nate still finds my teeth and my nightguard and my retainers endlessly fascinating.  He says to me, “When I gwow-up I’m going to have containers, too.”

Then tonight at dinner, James mixed-up the usual weeknight routine with a piping hot dish of lasagna.  The boys were lured into the kitchen by the smell of what they thought was pizza.  Seafood and Brussels sprouts are no big deal, but lasagna?  Took way more selling than one would expect for pasta, tomato sauce, ground meat and cheese.  Nate refused to eat it declaring, “I don’t like Arizona!”

I know it’s hot, but do you want a cookie?  Two bites of Arizona.  Make it happen.

It looks as though I’ve mentioned Wild Kratts in passing, though I’ve not let on that Jake is completely addicted.  For those of you not up on the many choices in cartoon viewing these days (and believe me, I certainly wasn’t just four short years ago), Wild Kratts is a cartoon on PBS about the Kratt brothers, Chris and Martin.  They seem to be some sort of fraternal version of Steve Erwin with a number of wildlife shows aimed at teaching kids about biology, zoology and ecology.  Chwis and Mawrt-in (as Nate calls them), begin the show as real men and then they jump and say “What if?!” which turns them into (much thinner) cartoon characters of themselves that can do just about anything.

The Wild Rats (as the bad guy, Zach Varmitech calls them) are supported by a team of two women engineers, Aviva and Koki, and some skater dude named Jimmy Z.  I’m not sure how we came across this show, but it has obliterated all other shows in Jake’s world.  Nate has to make desperate pleas for Tumi Zoomi (Team Umizoomi).  In most episodes, Aviva designs a new creature power suit which allows the wearer to gain the powers of whatever animal they are studying by physically touching the target creature and inserting some sort of CD-ROM into the chest.

For several months Jake was hell-bent on making his own creature power suit.  Almost every day he would tell me I needed to take him to a junk yard so he could get the supplies he needed.  I dodged that bullet by letting him know that Granddad is the only one who really knows where the junk yards are (or Santa Cruz flea market as the case may be).  Payback for giving the boys an endless supply of squirt guns?  Possibly…

Jacob has moved on from creature power suits, but every day I hear things like, “Mom, Mom.  Cowbirds are nest parasites.”  “Mom, Mom.  I think we need to go out in the woods and get piscina leaves and then mash them into a sticky paste and rub them on our arms.  That’s what orangutans do.  They make their own medicine.  Oh, but watch out for the dads.  They have the strength of five men.”  “Mom, Mom.  This is how a water-walking basilisk runs.”  “Baby caracals are so cute.”  “Tarsiers have eyes the size of grapefruits.”  “Dodos are my favorite extinct bird.”  “That fly must be a different species from the fly we caught yesterday.”  “You mean back when dinosaurs roamed the earth?”  He is an endless current of animals I’ve never heard of and facts and figures on extinct Tasmanian tigers and western spotted skunks and the difference between largemouth and smallmouth bass and it goes on and on and on.

One night a few weeks ago I got the following text message from Jacob’s teacher, Miss Amy: Tell Jakey I just knew an answer on Jeopardy because of him… it was a star-nosed mole!  He taught me that!

Speaking of Miss Amy, when we came home from Hawaii she told us she was so glad Jake was back because they have such interesting lunch conversations about how their brains work and science and discussions about animals.  She lamented about having to talk about princesses the whole time he was gone.

Over July fourth when we were in San Luis Obispo, just as we were headed to the car to drive home, we see a lady on the street trying to take a picture of a bird high up in a tree in front of the mission.  We stop and I look up to see what she’s looking at.  A hawk?  An owl?  Who knows…

“Mom, Mom.  That’s a peregrine falcon.  See it has a spotted chest.  A spotted chest.”

I’m convinced he just thinks it’s a peregrine falcon as that’s his favorite bird, given it’s the fastest animal on earth (thanks Wild Kratts).

And then I hear the lady say with expert confidence, “Yep.  That’s a peregrine falcon.”

Alex, I’ll take Princesses for $400.

One thing we’ve tried to instill in these kids from a very early age is the value of adventurous eating.  It’s one of the very few things we’ve actually been successful at instilling.  That and as I mentioned previously, staring out the window on long car rides.  I’m not exactly sure how these two skills will pay off in the long run but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

I remember back before having kids we spent a bit of time with a two-year-old and a four-year-old named William and Isabella.  They were always chomping down on blue cheese and mission figs.  Apparently it could be done.

Both Jake and Nate genuinely believe that the only reason they are big, strong, and smart is through the wonders of salad.  Nate eats a bite of lettuce and then immediately shows me his elbows so I can ooh and aah at how strong he is getting, right before my very eyes.  Next time you see them, just ask, “How did you get so big?”  They will invariably answer: Salad.

Last October, I hired a young man at work onto my team.  During the interview process, it never really came up that he was joining a team of relative foodies…  The first week on the job, we realized that he is not an adventurous eater and so I took it upon myself to talk him into trying new things.

I have to say, he has been an impressively good sport.  I’ve talked him into trying a bunch of things, mainly seafood, maybe half of which he tolerated and the other half he politely determined wasn’t really his thing.  I tried to match my own challenges and recently had uni, also known as sea barf.  I mean sea urchin.  At least I tried it, which is the rule around our dinner table.

Two weeks ago we had three days where I’m pretty sure Jake and Nate ate more “exotic” foods than my work colleague has eaten in several years…  It started with James’ birthday when we went out for sushi.  James ordered calamari, which Nate excitedly declared as octopus.  Both of the kids only wanted legs, which frankly I was happy to oblige as I’ve never been a fan of the legs.  I’ve always preferred the innocuous chewy Cheerio-shaped calamari.  Nate ate all the complimentary soba noodles and some salmon.  Of course the meal culminated in green tea ice cream— a household favorite.  The next day when we recapped our outing with Nonna, she was pretty skeptical of the merits of green tea ice cream.

Recently Jakey told me his favorite meat is buffalo.  “I just love buffalo, Mom.”  It’s a standard weekly ingredient in Dad’s spaghetti sauce.  I try not to think about it too much as I still feel squeamish after several childhood visits to Casa de Buffalo.  Fortunately Casa de Fruta has eliminated that attraction.

The next day was graduation day and full of more celebrations and feasting.  The boys can easily be counted on to knock back bowls of edamommy (as Granddad calls it) and two orders of Korean sticky ribs.  If I was Japanese I would totally change the name of this blog to Edamommy.

On Friday of that week, my work team took me out to celebrate my last lunch with them before moving on to a new job.  We had Spanish food and I brought home the leftovers: chorizo, paella, grilled octopus, and prawns with the head still on.

Nate decided to eat the prawn head, antennae and all, despite my recommendations not to.  He told me they’re good and crunchy.  But then he found out that there was only one octopus leg and Jake had already eaten it.

“Where’s my octopus leg?” he asked, on the verge of disappointed tears.

No matter how high my hopes were for raising adventurous eaters, I never could have hoped for that.

Jacob’s favorite breakfast: lox, toast w/ ketchup and a poached egg.  The lox was the same size as that giant piece of toast.

On our way to Avila this weekend we stopped in Paso to grab some lunch.  There are a number of places on my Pinterest board that I’m dying to try… just not with two little monkeys that have been caged in a Toureg for several hours.

I do have to say that we’ve actually been successful in training them to stare out the window at the scenery for hours, or to “take the shortcut.”  In my family that’s code for taking a nap.  I’m not proud to admit that I did not understand this clever little euphemism until my age was at least in the double digits.

So we stop in Paso and go to one of our regular standbys.  Jake tells me has has to go to the bathroom and it looks like it’s my turn to take him.  The ladies room is occupied and so I usher him into the men’s room.  Not to worry, it was a one seater… and he’s kind of a man I assured him.

I lock the door and Jake goes about his business, standing up.  Sometimes he prefers to stand on the side.  I’m not sure if this is because he’s usually making room for Nate (which Daddy has banned) or if it’s just because he’s going for unconventional.  In any case, things are going well and then something abrupt happens, “Whoa, whoa.  Jake you’re missing the bowl.”

He quickly regains control.

Then I notice he’s rubbing his right eye.

“What’s the matter with your eye?”

He turns to me and looks up, “I got pee in it.”

“You did?”

He finishes up and pulls up his drawers.  “And Mom, some pee went up my nose, too.”

“It did?  Okay then.  Let’s wash hands.  And your face…”

I get back to the lunch table and before I can even sit down Nate says, “Mama, I have to go potty.”

I’m really excited right now because first, we’re on our way to a fun-filled four day July fourth weekend at Avila Beach with the Purnells.  And second, we get to pick-up my latest vintage poster that I had framed in San Luis Obispo.  Yes, three hours away seems a little far to have things framed, but no one gives better artistic advice and has a perfectly curated wall of just enough framing choices than Ken at the Just Looking Gallery.

So my latest purchase is this poster of middle eastern architecture from the 1930’s Egyptian Railway system.  I bought it because the colors are phenomenal, I’m celebrating getting off the train once a week, and it reminds me of our Rose Garden neighborhood.  Well, and I may have a bit of a thing for vintage posters.  I only have two at this point so it’s not like it’s a problem or anything…

This poster reminds me of our hood because we are also neighbors of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, known to most fourth graders within a two-hour field trip radius as the Mummy Museum.  As a kid I think it was an annual Happy Valley pilgrimage.  It turns out that this little neighborhood gem houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in western North America.  It seems it also attracted a number of Rosicrucians to the neighborhood, as evidenced by this crazy cool 1920’s style house further down our street.  It has two Egyptian cat statues on either side of the steps and at Halloween they put a real full-size coffin on their front porch.  It’s amazing.

My other piece of evidence is that at our first house, there was a crazy old French lady that lived behind us.  Her name was Andrée.  She told me that’s the female version of André.  She also told us she moved to San Jose because she was a Rosicrucian.  One time she threatened to kill James.  She had dementia.  I had to call the po-lice on her keister, or should I say, derrière.  It was for her own good, really.  She finally got the care she needed.

As a little boy, my brother Geoff was creeEEeeped-out by the mummies.  At some point around Halloween he asked my mom, “Is there weally a skeleton inside ouw bodies?”  When she confirmed his worst fears, he violently shuddered from head to toe.

A few weeks ago, I needed to pack for my week-long trip to Colorado and so James decided to take a walk with the boys to the Rosicrucian Museum.  He got to the front and read the prices:

Kids 5 and up: $5

Kids 4 and under: Free

One look around and James knew they wouldn’t be there long.  The ticket taker asks, “How old are they?”

James replies, “Four-and-a-half and two-and-a-half.”

Jake immediately exclaims, “I’m not four-and-a-half!”

Fortunately the ticket taker had a sense of humor.  James only paid for himself and barged on in.  I still find it hard to believe he’d begrudge our neighborhood mummy museum $5… but he is saving up for that outdoor couch he wants for the backyard.

Later that afternoon when they return home I ask Nate, “So how was the museum?”

He tells me very seriously, “I don’t like the Mommy Hole.”

“What?”  I don’t even want to know what he’s referring to.  Turns out he’s talking about the replica of a mummy’s tomb that you walk down into.

His eyes get really big, “Too scawee.”  And then he shudders.

As far back as I can remember, Jacob didn’t want to sleep.  At five days old, he was squirming and yanking his protective eyewear off at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital under the jaundice lights.  I didn’t sleep the entire night.  Neither did he.

As he got older, he would fight sleep with every ounce of his being.  The second I’d lay him in his crib he would pop back up like toast.  There were nights where he had to sleep in the baby swing just to save our sanity.  To this day, he has challenged, fought, avoided, and protested the idea of nap time no matter how hard I try.  Except at school, rarely any problems there.  Of course.

When he was a toddler I remember knock-down-drag-out brawls as I tried to rock him to sleep and he tried to escape… his determination was unyielding.  And believe me, we were in a similar weight class.

When he was two he told Grandma “I don’t sleep.”  He truly believed that to be an unquestioned fact.

At four, I found myself passing his dark room at 10pm, only to see a glassy-eyed, polterguist-like child staring back at me with his sleep-deprived zombie stare.

At five, James noticed that when he’s getting sleepy, he deliberately gets up and does something to stay awake.

I think since the beginning of time it has stemmed from FOMO: Fear of Missing Out.  And since I’m throwing around the hip new lingo, my sister-in-law, Erin, just taught me the perfect new vocabulary word: hangry.  It fits Jacob perfectly.  It’s when one’s level of hunger overtakes one’s ability to reason and is replaced by frustrated anger.  He also gets mad when he’s tired… tirate if you will.  I just invented that.  Maybe I need to submit that to the urban dictionary?

Nate has always been the exact opposite.  When he gets tired he gets silly.  Nonna noticed it before his first birthday. I think her exact words might have been, “When he’s sleepy it’s like he’s drunk.” If Jake is a fighter, Nate is a lover.  I’d liken it to those people that get really lovey when they’ve been drinking; “I love you man” kind of guys.  When he’s sleepy he gives me a lot of kisses and likes to rub noses.  He spontaneously exclaims, “I lub you Mama.  You’re so beautiful.”  I’ve never had much trouble talking him into falling asleep.  Every so often he cries and resists, but he acquiesces pretty easily.

This past weekend he started to push back on mandatory nap time as well.  We swam for several hours at the pool and then on the way home, he started protesting the inevitable, “I don’t want to sleep.  Why Jakey don’t have to take a nap?”

“Look, Jakey is five and he has to rest and play quietly.  Plus I have spent five years fighting him and I give up.”  I left that last part unsaid.  I continued, “Why would we name you Napthaniel if you weren’t supposed to take naps?”

“I’m not Nap-taniel.”

“What?  Sure you are.  We call you Napthaniel because you love taking naps.”

“I’m not Nap-taniel.  I’m Nate!”

Uh oh… I think I’ve made him hangry.  Or tirate.

See?  It’s already catching-on.