kids are getting smarter

It's been one of those weeks.  You know, the kind where I start questioning my parenting skills.  The kind of week where one of your kids gets sent the principal's office for throwing his lunch bag 10 feet in the air and it lands on another kid and makes him cry.  The kind of week where the same kid, while we are swimming at the pool, plays with the pay phone even though his mom told him not to and then 15 minutes later a cop shows up and asked if anyone dialed 911 (in this kid's defense, he didn't think it would work without putting money in).  I could go on.  Some of these things crack me up and I grab my camera and want to remember them always.  Some of these things make me want to climb into bed. And some of these things I know most would not share but I am kind of looking for some sympathy, here.   I start thinking... do we not give him enough attention?  Do we give him too much attention?  Do we spoil him?  Are we too rigid?  Are we too chaotic?  Do we have too many consequences?  And I go back and forth like that for a while.  

The fact is.  The kids are getting smarter.  The problem is, they seem to be getting smarter at a faster rate than my parenting skills seem to be growing.  Seldom do they do something and I think, "Oh, I know how to deal with this in the correct, best, most meaningful way."   

He is obsessed with money.  Counts it, finds it, earns it, talks about it...  The cool stuff that we brought back from Mongolia?  He wants to know if he can exchange it for US dollars to add to his stash.  Nice.  Sometimes he will ask me how much money I have and is always unimpressed by how much cash I have. 

I don't mind this money obsession.  For about two dollars I got a ton of house work done.  We're talking bathrooms, floors, baseboards, laundry... 

I learned that when he wants to earn a quarter, it takes him about 3 minutes to sort the laundry.  When his doing it because it is his job, it takes about 45 minutes.  Funny how that works.

 This photo is a little less industrious and a little more Luke Dunphy but he is doing that floating hotdog trick.  You can't graduate from recess unless you know this trick.  Oh, and there is  a gecko on the carpet.  

Eva is getting older too.  She is starting to think more.  Which means she questions my stuff more.  Which is supposed to be good but it doesn't make me feel good.  So, then I feel extra bad that I really don't appreciate something that is actually good.  

Here is crafty grown up Eva making leis for her grandparents.  

The way we were taught, you use your toes.  Awesome, huh?  Maybe only awesome if you have cute toes, though.

Even Baby Maximus has decided to outsmart me.  Like, he used to sign, "more" when he wanted something.  It was adorable and I was always happy to oblige.  But lately he realized that it's less work for him to just kind of fake whine until he gets what he wants.  Smart, right?  Whining is in the universal language for babies to get what they want.  He whines, we rush to please him, he smiles.   Or, he whines, I try and sign back and emphasize using his words, he whines, I give him what he wants, he smiles.  

He likes to have a spoon in each hand.  Guess how I know.  He whined it to me.

 But in general he is such a happy kid that I hate to make drama over spoons.  You know?  Or don't you.

 That kid is so confident.  He is so pleased with his eating skills.

 And as a random side note, if you know where I am from then you know that I am very grateful that Baby can be eating on the lanai (deck) with no shirt on.  

 Just how many pictures of a kid eating can one person post?  I held back.  There are more.  I loved them all. Just like my kids.  It was hard to pick my favorite.   

So, the kids are getting older.  And they are getting smarter.  Well, except for the dialing 911 thing, and the lunch box thing, and the...  Okay, for the most part they are getting smarter.  And I am having a hard time keeping up.  The thing is, before I had kids, I swear I knew so much more.  Hehehe. 

Tonight, after finding two sets of dirty clothes on the floor for what seems to be the hundredth time (and I never ever ever exaggerate) I told them that I am going to start charging them for the clothes they leave on the floor.  Husband said to start low.  So I set it at a quarter.  And this is how Eva replies,

"Well, I have forty four dollars and that will be about two dollars a week.  So..."

She seriously decided it was worth it for her to leave her clothes on the floor!  And since when do kids have forty four dollars?  

My mom always tells me that parents can raise kids because the parents are still young.  But I'm feeling quite old these days.  See?  I just said, "these days."  That is an old people thing to say.  And so, I send it out to the universe... 

May my parenting skills improve faster than the rate that my kids get smarter.  

Cheers. 

koke'e: prawn, walk, flagpole

My parents are here and even though it is their vacation, it feels like it our vacation.  We do fun stuff everyday.  We eat good stuff everyday.  

I love it.  

Everyday is packed.  Just the way I like it.  Well, as long as it is with good stuff. 

Sometimes when sweet friends invite you up to a cabin up the canyon and you have a hundred things you're supposed to do, you turn it down.  But since we are on a seemingly perpetual vacation, we couldn't turn it down.  Real life, shmeal life, right?  We packed a big ol' lunch (meaning my mom cooked and I loaded it up).  Musubi, kiriboshi daikon no tsukemono (spicy daikon, carrot, kombu salady type stuff that I love so much and it makes me so happy that I swear if husband thinks I am so mysterious about things that make me happy all he needs to do is learn how to make this), tonkatsu (breaded fried pork), and yakisoba (delicious but not photogenic)...  And headed up the "Grand Canyon of Kauai."  

After the feast, we headed on a walk.  But first, we needed a trap for the prawns in the stream.  A Cutie bag, string, and a wire hanger, MacGuyver would have been jealous.  

It was more foresty than jungle-y up there and that kind of made it feel like we were in my hometown.  

Kids love a project.  They love a goal.  I love that.  And this walk was Project Catch a Prawn for them.  

Jeans and Plaid Shirt Club.

I watched Baby Maximus start getting kind of bored up there and he started feeling around for something to play with.  

My little family and my little parents.  Teehee.  

Looks like the boys in my little family don't like haircuts.  

And we're back to the prawns.  Can you see this one?  Right in the middle of the photo.  We don't get to see a lot of prawns where I come from.

So, sometimes you meet a mom that reminds you that it's really okay if your kid wants to climb into the shallow stream and catch a prawn.  Chances are, if the kid goes in by choice, he won't complain about the frostbite and hypothermia.  Just kidding.  There was no danger  of that.  But that is what I would be thinking.  That, plus the muddy and the soggy pants.  All those things would stop me from letting my kid go in.  But then I am robbing the kid of the experience and the memory.  Awesome mom, huh?  She even helped him catch it.  I need to remember this.  

I would have robbed them of the excitement of actually catching something.

Part cool.  Part ew.

I had to laugh at this photo.  Kids like a goal.  And grown up kids like a goal.  I turned around and these two are doing a little bit of mountain clean up it looks like.  You know, just moving some branches and whatnot.  

These two love each other.  They love each other as much as Eva is shrimpy and Maximus is giant.  That's a lot.  She likes to carry him and it always makes me a little nervous.  Maybe because they seem like they might weigh about the same.  

You know those sweet photos of the family where the mom and dad are both holding baby's hand, walking through the forest?  I don't.  Maximus would have none of that cliche' garbage.

I know the photo is fuzzy in one and his eyes are closed in the other.  But together they show how much of a ball kid he is.  Some things you don't teach a kid.  You don't say, "Now Baby, take this ball and carry it around the house all day.  Love it.  Find a ball wherever you go and don't let go."  They just come out that way.  

And sometimes you meet someone that reminds you that life can be pretty funny most of the time.  "Can you see me?" he said.  

Baby Maximus eating his fifth cookie.  Because for some reason, when you are sitting around a campfire, you eat more junk than you usually would.  Campfires are places where encased meat products plus a graham cracker chocolate marshmallow sandwich make a meal.  Right?

Fresh prawn.  Really really fresh.  They roasted it and ate it.  

This kid.  You also don't teach a kid to do painfully entertaining things like hook a flag clip to his belt loop.  They just figure out those things on their own.  

Zero fat Samuel.  Strong enough and light enough to pull himself up.  Strong Samuel.  Strong jeans.  We all watched it, we all thought it, we all couldn't believe it when he actually did it.  

I gave birth...

...to a freaking cartoon character.  

You never think about Bugs Bunny's mom, or Mickey's mom.  

I am Samuel's mom.  

Koke'e.  

Ate a lot.  

Learned a lot.  

Laughed a lot.  

co-co-nuts!

This was the season of baseball.  One long season. Actually, it was two seasons that overlapped that made it feel like the longest season ever.  Six days a week.  That is a lot of days to not be able to go the beach.  

It wouldn't have been so long if Samuel was all crazy about it and held any bit of enthusiasm for it.  I needed his enthusiasm to carry me over.  But the problem was, the whole family was sharing Karl's enthusiasm.  

This is how Samuel felt about it most of the time:

 Sometimes we could get him to pretend like he cared:

 But if he had his way he would mostly be this way all the time:

 He had some of the best fans out there:

With supporter t-shirts and everything.

 And pep talks.  He got lots and lots of pep talks from Karl.  Lots of them.

 I guess we were somehow the youngest team.  I don't know how teams work but I think some people are a lot more competitive than we ware.  Read: they actually care about the game.  

So, sometimes we would go to the games and the other teams would hit the ball really hard and run super duper fast and I swear they would always be wearing black.  Oh, and they always seemed to have these super fancy chants.  Something about hitting home runs and playing just they learned in practice or something like that.

 But as he got more into the season, Karl pointed out that he has come a long ways.  And it was true.  He improved a ton.

Samuel has this way of getting you to do things.  He goes through phases.  He can make us end every word in the conversation with -ito.  Somehow he can do it.  He just has a way.  It's amazing.  Uh, amazing-ito.

So, one day, Samuel's team starts chanting, too.  And it went like this:

Let's go Samuel, Let's go... CO-CO-NUTS!

Co-co-nuts?  Samuel had a coconuts phase, too.  But he says it with an accent.  It comes out co-co-nuts.  

He got his whole team to chant co-co-nuts.  Coaches and all.

It was charming.  Us parents laughing in the bleachers about how they ought to bury snacks at second base and then maybe the team would care more, the other teams with their fancy chants hitting the ball super far, and our team, the Bad News Bears, with our special chant...

Let's go Samuel, Let's go... CO-CO-NUTS!

  

This was his last game.  His best hit of the season.  And you should have heard his team cheering.  They knew how far he had come, too.

And even though he has improved leaps and bounds, he will still keep being Samuel.  It's just the way it is.  What is he doing in this photo?

This will be a season that I will always remember...

 if for nothing else, because of the co-co-nuts!

twigs and blossoms

When my life's medium is mostly crayons, t-shirts, brown rice, and baby wipes, I forget that there is a whole world of high fashion and fine art out there.  Fashion beyond what I can find on Pinterest or the the latest sale at Gap.  Fine art beyond card stock and double stick tape.

My friend asked us if my kids would want to participate in fashion show that her friend, Bruna, the owner of Gallery 103, was hosting.  Louda Larrain was the designer for the fashion show, The Birth of Fashion Revisited. Eva and Samuel were going to be in the opening act, Twigs and Blossoms, where kids wear their own designs using white cotton fabric and leaves and flowers.

As excited as Eva was to participate, Samuel was unexcited.  So, with a little bribery (okay, a lot of bribery) we were able to convince him that he wanted to do it.

The week before we got instructions from Louda on how to put together a "couture" gown.  

So, while we learned how to make things out of branches and leaves, Maximus wandered around beautiful sculptures worth thousands of dollars.  No biggie. 

And when the designer went to put a few finishing touches on our creation, she asked Eva if she liked it.  Eva told her she didn't, so she kindly pulled it out.  I was surprised at Eva's courage and opinion.  Eva later told me that just because she is a famous designer, doesn't mean that I have to like it.  Wise, right?  

You won't believe how much coaxing it took to get Samuel to take his shirt off and wear this and walk a runway.  The kid won't go into the grocery store with a swim suit on, which is practically the uniform on this island.  But in the end, he was glad he did it.  The new remote control cars, two dollars, and shave ice might have helped.  We aren't above bribery. 

 These are our friends.  We don't choose our friends by how adorable they are.  That part is just coincidence.  

And here is the big moment...
and spoken like a true mom, I just love her.  I love that face.  Love it.

 And I was clapping so hard, I was so proud of this kid, I almost forgot to snap a photo.
And this kid, those lips, that zero fat body that still loves to cuddle, and knowing how brave he was being, oooh, I love him, too.

 And our friends...

 And the main show?  As my kids were nestled in my lap and my parents seated in the audience... let's just say it was highly educational.  An education on anatomy.  Creative, beautiful, and... educational.

These are the g-rated fashions.  This is a family blog, after all.  I was so impressed with how my kids handled it.  Or rather, didn't handle it.  I didn't know it was possible for a 7 year old boy and a 9 year old to be able to see so much skin and take it in as art.  I am proud of them.  

 This also happens to be one of my friends.  And when she was asked to be in the show, her conditions were that she needed to be covered.  Stunning.  Her and and the gown.

 Eva with the designer.   

Branches, leaves, flowers, high fashion, runways, artsy people... an opportunity of a lifetime and so much fun.   

Now, back to my crayons, t-shirts, brown rice, and baby wipes...