wild*life

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.

We had a lovely Easter this year.  I got Nate to wear a new outfit with little sharks that matched his brother.  He made a case for “the black and blue one Superman shirt,” but I prevailed.

The Easter Bunny came and Jake fell asleep before he could catch him.  Leprechauns, Easter Bunny, Santa, Tooth Fairy: Be Warned… Jacob is after you.

We had a delicious brunch at the Farm and a big egg hunt with Devon.  Jakey could even climb the arbor to reach the extra high eggs.  Nate lost interest early on.

One of the most exciting parts of Easter at our house is getting the big teal Easter bin out of the basement.  We have a giant bag of plastic Easter eggs.  And after it was all said and done, I managed to get the bag back into the basement undetected, only to have two Easter addicts hopped-up on chocolate beg me to bring it back up again.  Easter ended with a lot of loud commanding and whining and chocolate-induced, sleep-deprived misbehavior.  The noise levels in our house are reaching record highs.

Creating egg hunts around our house has kept Jake busy and quiet for many an April Nate nap time.  Nate then wakes-up and the search is on.  Somehow JJ always finds “the grand prize.”  Though to his credit, Nate did find the “special rainbow egg prize” which is an evangelical Christian refillable egg complete with Sweet Tart crucifixion crosses courtesy of someone at St. Lizzie’s preschool.

Unfortunately, our house is now littered with countless plastic egg halves.  Every cupboard I open, every drawer, every inch of generally passable floor space is strewn with disparate egg parts.  I even opened my purse at work to find an orange tiger-striped egg.

On the upside, JJ likes to hop into “character” at night, pretending to be a bunny.  He eats organic carrots from the crisper.  He hops around and wiggles his nose.  Best of all, I’ve found out, bunnies don’t talk.  They just look at you expectantly and chomp on unscrubbed carrots.  Hallelujah, my prayers have been answered.

Meanwhile, I’ve been absconding with plastic egg halves for almost two entire months and still… I’m finding them in the backseat of my car, under my bed, next to the back door.  It’s a losing battle and I am on the brink of surrender.  Let us pray:

Our Bunny who art on Easter Island; hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day, our daily chocolate; and forgive us our basement transgressions, as we forgive those who transgress against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from eggs.  Amen.

This morning James and I are unsuccessfully trying to sleep past 6am on a Saturday morning and we are joined by the little one.  He starts asking his usual string of questions and it goes something like this:

“Mama, why is you so big and Daddy is GIANT?”

“Well, we’re grown-ups.  Someday you’ll be big like a grown-up, too.”

“Yeah, I was a little baby.”

“That’s right.  You started as a little baby, and then you became a little kid, and then you’ll be a big kid, and then you’ll be a grown-up, too.”

“And then you and Daddy and Jakey and me will all be gwown-ups?”

“Exactly.”

“Yay!  Den we can weach da wemote contwol!”

Last week I was packing for an overnight work trip to Sausalito and was reminded of an incident back in January.

Every January I “get to go” to Vegas for a week-long work meeting.  Each year my room is exactly the same as the year before.  I’ve come to think of it as my “winter home.”  So the first night I’m there I put my stuff in my room, go back out for some meetings and come back to get ready for dinner.  I flip the light switch on in my palatial Vegas bathroom and shriek out loud at the site of a large brown cockroach by the toilet.

In the split second before I go to arm myself with a shoe (yes, my mom trained me at a very early age), I think, “Wait a second… that cockroach looks familiar.”  Those are the exact words that went through my head: that cockroach looks familiar.

And low and behold, it was a familiar cockroach.  A familiar brown rubber cockroach that my boys acquired somewhere and had somehow hitched a ride with me, all the way to Nevada.

I vaguely remembered some shenanigans that morning when I was getting dressed for my trip.  Jacob tried to put it up the back of my shirt but I disarmed him.  Then I believe Nate got ahold of it and shoved it into the back of my jeans pocket and ran off in a fit of accomplished giggles.  I went about my business and somehow it never fell out in the airport or on the airplane and serendipitously showed up on my hotel bathroom floor.

This past week as I’m packing for an overnight trip, Nate is monkeying around on my bed and laughs his Evil Uncle Geoff Laugh (it’s like a mischievous Dracula belly laugh).  He outs himself by showing me that he’s hidden the rubber cockroach inside my suitcase.  We have two of these bugs by the way.

I have a feeling this is less common with girls…

That cockroach looks familiar…

It’s hard to keep up with the many comings and goings of these little rascals.  Below are a few of the latest and greatest things I’ve overheard in 2014:

Jake (age 4): “Nate, Nate.  When you’re done changing your diaper and putting your clothes on, pick out a hat.  You can be my trusty sidekick.”

Nate (age 2 over New Year’s Eve): “Mama, hold my lickstick.  Hold my lickstick.”  (Referring to one of his twelve tubes of Chapstick as he runs off to tackle his brother.)

Nate (age 2 as he’s frantically grasping at the back of his neck): “I don’t like the flag.  The flag!”  (Referring to the tag in his shirt, which is sticking straight up like a white flag.  This happens frequently.)

Nate (age 3 in Maui):  “Scoop over, Mom.  Scoop over.”  (As he commandeers my spot in the hotel’s king-size bed.)

Jake (age 4 with an iPhone in hand): “Come here Nate.  Let’s take selfies.”  (I think I learned this term maybe six months before I heard him say this.  Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt and assume this happened back in 2013.  I’m sure it did.)

Nate (age 3 in a variety of situations, primarily involving water):  Started out as “Candaball!”  Followed by a large splash.  Then in Hawaii it morphed into “Cannonbox!”  And on the last day of our trip, “Cannonbob…cat!”  (Now that’s just crazy.)

My all time favorite was in Hawaii when Nate started calling it “sunscream”.  The way Jakey was whooping and hollering about putting it on every day made me think… it will forever be sunscream.  Forever.

Another reason to scream… is that the Hulk?

The boys have been in the bunk beds for months now and it’s time for me to take down the crib and decide what to do with it.  Parting with certain baby things is harder than one might expect.  Maybe this is why my parents still have my childhood crib in their attic?

The other night a phrase came to me out of nowhere: Thick as thieves.  That’s exactly how I would describe these two little boys.  In every picture they’re half hugging, half strangling each other.  Fortunately, not on purpose.  In any case, I feel incredibly fortunate that they are such good buddies and rarely fight like cats and dogs.  Though sometimes they do and honest to goodness, it literally sounds like a cat and a dog fighting in this little cartoon-like tumbleweed.

So the two little partners in crime have been taking what feels like a million years to go to sleep every night.  Now that they’re in the same room, there is all sorts of new shenanigans being dreamed up each and every night.  More agua, more animals, this toy, that toy, baybits, flashlights.  No one can secretly eat dessert on the couch in peace.

And every night they decide to sleep somewhere else.  Sometimes Jake is on the top bunk and Nate is on the bottom bunk.  Sometimes Nate is on the top and Jake is on the bottom.  Sometimes they’re both on the top.  Sometimes they’re both on the bottom.  Sometimes I go to sleep with one guy laying next to me and wake-up with another.  That didn’t come out right.  Sometimes I go to sleep with one guy and wake-up with two, or three.  That really didn’t sound right.  Every night is a new game of musical beds.

But I do have to admit, there is almost nothing more adorable than seeing Jacob and Nathaniel cuddled up together in the bottom bunk.  Angelic.  Seriously might be the cutest thing in the world.

I’d love to snap a picture but I’m afraid the flash will wake them up.

And that would not be cute at all.

Miss Dulce took this picture at school when they weren’t looking.  Insanely adorable, right?

On our second to last night in Maui, we ventured out for the first time after dark and attended a luau at the Westin near Whaler’s Village.  James is fairly certain he saw the exact same luau emcee at his last luau at least ten years ago.  Only now, the gentleman is older and instead of climbing a palm tree to pick a coconut, he gets them like every other Hawaiian… at Walmart.

So we chose this luau because although not known as the most “authentic” choice, it did boast fire eaters.

We enjoyed a long buffet of various hawaiian-esque specialties.  My favorite was the pickled cucumber salad.  The whole experience reminded me of one of the first times I went home with James to the Central Valley.  We hadn’t been dating long and we attended some sort of barbecue inside a two-car garage.  Maybe because it was so hot?  I have no idea.  What I do remember is that a plate of bread was passed around and I excitedly blurted, “Oooh, Hawaiian bread!”  People were visibly horrified.  But in my defense, I have never seen a single loaf of “King’s Portuguese Sweet Bread” in all the years I’ve been frequenting Safeway.

Who knew there are a bunch of Portuguese people in Hawaii?  Portuguese people, that’s who.

So at the luau we enjoyed a buffet of Portuguese influenced hawaiian cuisine including deep pit pork and “Portuguese sausage.”  We call it linguiça in the CV, and uh, in Portugal.  Surprisingly, no portagee beans.

It was hard to concentrate on the show as I inherited a three-year-old lap child with 10,000 luau questions: Who’s talking?  What’s dat sound?  Why they naked?  Who’s singing?  Why she have grass on her dress?  What’s those lights?  On and on and on.  Part way through the show Nate tells me, “I like the Mommy dancers.  I don’t like the Daddy dancers.  I don’t like the Daddies.”

I explained that the Daddy dancers were fighters and they had to protect their homes and families.  He decided he still didn’t like them with their face painting and cross-eyed, chest-slapping, and tongue poking.  I’m assuming part of their strategy is looking deranged and crazy so that your enemies just flee and all you have to do is menacingly swirl fire sticks around and make faces and chant loudly.  Note to self if I’m ever being attacked.  Before the fire spinning and eating started, Nate decided he wanted to go inside and watch from the safety of the open-air lobby.

James and Nate watched from afar while Jake and I slow-danced during the couple’s anniversary song.  My anniversary partner was occupied.  But when the fire spinners started, the boys were mesmerized.  Once he realized they weren’t going to “put fire on his head,” Nate ventured back out to get a better look.  It seems Jakey may have told him something that raised concerns that he could possibly catch fire.  Older brothers…

At the end of the evening, on our way out to the car, Nate declares to his dad, “That was AMAZING.”  And now Jake and Nate spend each night spinning pretend fire sticks around with the appropriate flame whooshing sound effects.

For me, the highlight of the evening was seeing the giant bowl of poi at the buffett.  It was a dark, liquid brown.  I decide to get some because I like to try new things…  what is poi anyway?  As Nate and I make our way down the buffet, I’m juggling two plates and trying to make sure he doesn’t knock down any unsuspecting bystanders.  Nate can’t wait any longer— he sticks his finger into the poi on my plate, eagerly expecting fondue, “Oh, dat’s not chocolate.  Dat’s yucky.”

Can I interest you in some Hawaiian bread?

Yesterday afternoon a colleague of mine came to my office door with a plastic vacuum attachment in her hand, the length of her forearm.  “Look what I just found in my purse.”

“Is that from your vacuum?” I asked.

“It’s a sword.”  She also has two boys at her house— a four-and-a-half year-old and a one-and-a-half year-old.

“Oh, wait… wait.”  I rummage around in my purse, “Look what I have!”  I produce a teeny-tiny Barbie-sized pistol.  I think it came with our pirate ship and someone smuggled it into my carryall.

I challenge her to a duel.

But then she also produces a green plastic screwdriver…

And I surrender.  Clearly I’m screwed.

that by the age of five, the average American child has 4,000 toys.

I totally made that up, but admit it… for a split-second it seemed feasible, didn’t it?