peevish mama

I buy her a pair of gray skinny jeans, just like mine, just because. Because I’m missing her, yes, actually missing her, these first long days of school. Because of the two, this is the one who will be my shopping buddy, who will bring me my sizes, who will give me her honest opinion when she’s 10, 15, 22 and 40.

As I slip her new jeans up her suddenly, impossibly long legs, she puts her hands on her hips, her weight on one foot, the other toe pointing out, knocks her head to the side and and asks: Mama, are people who wear jeans, jeaniuses?

If only, DB. If only.

It hardly seems possible. It hardly seems possible that today Saint James turns ten and in a few days I turn ten times four. Always the good boy, he was born just in time to distract me from the (relative) angst of turning 30. It seems incredible that I even batted an eyelash about stepping out of my twenties into my thirties, but I suppose milestones are milestones and you feel what you feel.

Now I have a boy in double digits with long arms and legs, flopped against me on the couch with his book as I type, ready, once again, to soften the brunt of crossing into another decade. We’re having a big party to celebrate Dash and my birthdays because to turn 40 is actually a really good thing. Perhaps the last really good thing, but good nevertheless. But the real celebration, my heart’s celebration, is today, right now, for my boy. He’s requested bacon for breakfast, Chinese food for dinner, new soccer cleats and a couple of African Dwarf Frogs – such small requests when I take into account all he gives to me, day to day, every day: peace, quiet companionship, near constant physical contact, and pure, simple, unfiltered and abundant little boy love. A true blue mama’s boy and friend.

Happy Birthday, Saint James. Happy Birthday to us. May our next decade be as wondrous as this past one, and may it pass as slowly and sweetly as honey poured from a jar. I love you, buddy.

It’s funny how you can go years and years and years and never once think about the fact that as humans, we go through two entire sets of teeth. But then you have a couple of elementary school-age kids and woah, all of a sudden, it’s ALL ABOUT wiggly teeth, triumphant extractions, bloody smiles, the tooth fairy and let’s be frank, cashola.

A couple days ago Saint James lost a tooth, one of his eye teeth, when biting into a sausage sandwich. Blame it on that crusty French bread. He dutifully tucked it into the shirt pocket of the mouse on the tooth pillow and under his pillow. The Tooth Fairy managed to show up, but she’s wondering, as the number of teeth rattling around in her jewelry box increases by the day, is this just getting gross? It seems so cruel to toss them, yet, aside from their almost unbelievably teensy wheensy size, they aren’t all that attractive to keep around. And will they really want these when they are older? Like, would I want my baby teeth? I’m thinking no. And aside from throwing them out or stashing them, what else could you do? Bury them? Yikes, that has scandalous murder investigation and false imprisonment written all over it! For the love of God! Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT bury any teeth in your backyard! I keep thinking about that service that turns your cremated loved one into a diamond, but I have no time for the size of the diamond I’d scrape out of these tiny teeth. Now if that Arkansas woman with the 17 kids saved all the teeth, she might just be able to cobble together something worth flashing around the neighborhood Walmart. And not for nothing, but once you get beyond the front teeth, they actually do get bigger. It’s starting to feel a little ritualistic, even Jeffrey Dahmerish to keep collecting all these teeth. If I was some freaky potter, I would make an abstract sculpture representing the yin and yang of motherhood and I would stud it with all the baby teeth, but, alas, I am not. What do you do with the baby teeth?

So, I’d say it took me until about mid-July to hit my stride this summer. It took that long to find a way to be at peace with the level of activity (high), to embrace the heat and sweatiness of summer (moderate), to figure out a way to carve out a wee bit of time on my own (low). I figured out a few things as I was racing around in the minivan or cooling my heels at the pool, just in time for hazy, lazy August.

First of all, I need to consolidate these kids next summer. Getting them each to their own separate activities is hair raising and severely taxing on my temporal and spacial reasoning skills. So next year, for one week, they’ll all be doing ONE camp in ONE place. Even if they all have to go to a My Little Pony camp at Southwest High, I will kill 3 birds with one stone if it’s the last thing I do.

I also realized I don’t always have to go somewhere. I’m an out-of-the-house kinda girl. I never ever ever ever manage to just hang at home (which, I think, goes a long way toward explaining why the syrup bottle is still on the dining room table at 5:00 in the evening.) Most of the time we’ve got somewhere to go, but just as often, the exodus, the springing forth into the world, it’s completely self imposed by the ants in the pants mother who pretends her kids have ants in their pants and that’s why she’s dragging them out of the house all the time when really, let’s be honest, she’s totally the one with the ants in her pants.

Rain is good. Rain forces us to stay put and catch our breath. It soothes our parched nerves and grass. I love rain in the summer – even if it does catch me with all my beach towels hanging out to dry (grrr).

Dinner can be bread and cheese. We have a strange air conditioning system that cools half the house – a Phantom of the Opera air conditioner, if you will (but hopefully you won’t because that is terrible. Apologies!) Fortunately the half with air includes Dash and my bedroom. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include the kitchen. And most of the time, we don’t even bother with it during the day since we’re not home, so hanging out in my steamy kitchen is not high on the list of things I like to do. I really haven’t been cooking as much as assembling meals this summer and you know what? That works just fine.

I can’t write for shit in the summer. I just have to accept it. It’s as if my words are stuck in a big pot of warm honey and pulling them out is too messy and laborious an endeavor to attempt. I’m busy, yes, but also, I may be getting my fill of words out in the world. Catching up with our families in Michigan and Massachusetts, talking, talking, chatting with neighbors at a block party, friends at the farmers market, bored ladies at the pool, people standing with their bikes waiting for the light to change, talking, talking, talking. We are out of hibernation for a few shimmering months and there is much doing to be done. Our heavy humid air is thick with words, more than usual, and that’s enough for me right now.

Summer is flying, just like I knew it would, just as it always does. Every day, I will notice something, really notice something, in an  effort to slow it down. This morning. Devil Baby. Tousled swimming pool bed hair, eyes still puffy from a heavy summer sleep, puts on her rainboots and contemplates saving her forgotten stuffed dog and blankie from the rain. I watch her realize and accept. It’s too late.

Look what happens when you actually let your minivan sit idle in the driveway for an afternoon. All of a sudden, Supergirl has time to invite Big E, her best buddy, over to play. After some deep popsicle conversation on the swing set they set off for an adventure down at the creek with Saint James. They come back soaking wet. I suppress the urge to warn them about giardia. They leave again, brown shoulder butting brown shoulder as they scamper down the hill. After a spell Devil Baby and I decide to join them. I sit on a park bench. A park bench! When is the last time I sat, just sat, on a park bench? Saint James comes out of the water and folds his cool wet body into the side of mine. I watch Supergirl and Big E slither down a big rock into the water, floating on their backs as the current carries them gently downstream. I watch mallards swim by, giving them suspicious looks and wide berth. I watch Devil Baby rip leaves into teeny tiny chlorophyl confetti and throw them into the water, fingers spread wide in a celebratory flourish. I watch Big E give Supergirl a boost into a tree that is entirely too tall for them to climb and then her reach down to hoist him up – like traveling acrobats – gypsies – feral children. All of this because I stayed put. For one afternoon.

I can’t let June slip through my fingers without bloggishly wishing Devil Baby a happy fourth birthday. Her birthday on June 11th came and went in the midst of my laptop catastrophe and a trip to Michigan to celebrate El Maestro de Bife’s graduation from his surgical residency and Golden’s graduation from med school (well done, lads!). I’m not sure there’s ever been such a hotly anticipated birthday on my part. Her threes were, uh, challenging to say the least and I’m hoping her fours will yield a new era of peace. Yes, fourteen year old Devil Baby who may be reading this someday, you pretty much bossed me around and kicked my ass almost every day of your third year. Now, go clean your room. Just kidding. I love you. No, let me rephrase that: I love you, but you still need to clean your room.

Back to present, my little lass couldn’t have been sweeter. She reveled in all the attention and I saw this sort of sweet, shy, girlie side of her I hadn’t seen before. She got mermaid barbies, sparkly hair clips and pretty sundresses all of which she opened while beaming, coyly. Folks, I think we’ve got a girly girl and we are ready to run with it. My sweet little devil, my headstrong, willful, and now girly girl: if you keep working both of those angles, you, my dear, will be unfreakingstoppable!

I love you. I love you. Here’s to being four years old and fabulous!

A few weeks ago Doctor Dash was reading through some of the earlier nuggets in this blog and he told me that he loved remembering the stuff I had written about. It was a curious statement to me because I’ve only been doing this for a couple years. How much could he have forgotten? The truth is, we forget a lot. We forget most of the little details – the favorite t-shirts, the silly stories, the chatter after the tooth fairy visits, the white lies, the fights, the tears, the giant mosquito bites. We forget the minutiae, and without the minutiae, our memories are flat, colorless, or worse yet, not there at all. I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason to what sticks. And the firsts with our firsts tend to be clearer than the firsts with our seconds and thirds. I can’t remember Supergirl’s first steps, but I remember Saint James’ like they were yesterday. And I actually do remember Devil Baby’s, but that’s just because we were hoping and praying that she would be soothed by her new found locomotion, that some of the energy she spent screaming at us would be redirected to moving her chunky little legs.

This blog started out as a way for me to slow down time, to take notice of the quotidian, to be present. It is only now, after the passage of a couple years, that we’ve discovered that it also helps us remember. I don’t go back and read, but you’d better believe that someday I will. And I think that my kids will too. So, with that in mind, some minutiae:

Supergirl finally lost some teeth. We seem to spawn late teeth getters, hence late teeth losers. With each baby, we would wonder, gazing at their gummy drooly mouths, whether they would ever get teeth. As Saint James’ and Supergirl’s first birthdays approached (yes, we even kinda freaked the second time around), Doctor Dash took to the internet and I put my ear to the ground. I sorely regretted it when my neighbor, in her Texas drawl, said “Well, ah don’t know, but mah cousin had needle teeth.” NEEDLE TEETH! I gasped. I love their tenacious baby teeth, but my kids hate it. In kindergarten and first grade when their classmates are spitting out teeth left and right, my children frustratedly wiggle their tiny pearlies, hoping in vain for some movement. Supergirl was literally one of the last three kids in her grade to lose a tooth. (It’s incredible that I even know this, but I do. How many times did I invoke those other two names in an attempt to cheer her up about her stubborn baby teeth?) We went to Michigan and she managed to lose three teeth in two days, maximizing the attention as Supergirl is wont to do. Her big teeth are already growing in. Her face will change. I only wish she could keep that little Jack-o-lantern smile for a while longer, because as far as I’m concerned, those big chompers are a one way ticket to big kidhood.

When I started this post it was a nothing kind of afternoon. The kids were dressed for soccer with some time to kill and in the rarest and loveliest of moments had started playing a peaceful game of chess, unbidden by me. This is the kind of thing that would make me roll my eyes if I were reading it, so I’ll assure you that they aren’t usually this highbrow and civilized. Normally when they’re bored they turn on the T.V., play Wii, google Justin Bieber or fight. Supergirl also has this move where she lies on the ground and whines about how bored she is while using her legs to spin herself around like a clock hand. But just this once, on a muggy afternoon, with a basket of folded laundry lurking in the corner, they played chess. I grabbed my camera and just like that, minutiae became memory.

I’m still here. All is well. I have much to report, much to celebrate and digest, but I have no laptop at the moment. Saint James + intriguing toy wrapped in plastic + coffee cup = no laptop for mama. And since my chitlins are all up in my business all the time, requiring food and rides and sunscreen at all hours, I can’t very well duck into Doctor Dash’s man cave to use the desk top. Night times are simply not an option. I am falling asleep as I type.

I leave you with a question. At what age does a girl begin to notice when her swimsuit is stuck in her butt? I don’t know the answer, but I do know the answer is not four. As if I don’t spend enough of my life sunscreening the porcelain-skinned Devil Baby, now I need to watch out for her adorable, chunkalicious bootay because sister has got a wedgie, like, ninety percent of the time.

G’night.

On the last day of preschool, the teachers give  you all the stuff that’s been hanging on the walls: the laminated balloon with your kid’s birthday, the froggy with your kid’s name, the self portraits with giant smiling heads and stick bodies with too many fingers, and, apparently, the conversation bubbles from their unit on “jobs.” How did I miss this? How did I not know that my youngest child aspires to be a truck driver and a hair stylist? How does she even know about these jobs? It actually makes sense – marrying the princess with the brute aspects of her personality. It’s also a good idea when you think about it. If you botch someone’s hair, well, that’s a good time to hit the open road, leaving the mullets, pink hair and fried perms behind you like so many broken hearts. And just think of all those truck drivers, slumped behind sludgy cups of coffee and gelatinous wedges of pie, who could use a fresh and sassy little trim. She may single handedly put an end to trucker caps! I’m so proud.

In other crumpled up paper news, I found a well worn and folded piece of loose leaf on the counter which is always intriguing to me. Sometimes it’s a spelling test, but just as often it’s the bylaws for a secret club, or drawings of aliens, or the beginnings of a story, or a menacing letter to a sibling (keep your pows (sic) of (sic) my things!) I opened it up to discover a score sheet for a “DANCE OFF” which listed nearly all of the kids in Saint James’ class. They had some tough judges, as no one got more than 10 out of 30 points, except for a couple of boys. Saint James was listed as a “bonus feature” and when I asked him about it he shrugged: I didn’t want to be judged. I just wanted to dance. If you ask me, truer words were never spoken. I’m so proud.

And finally, you might want to keep your eyes peeled for a certain shady character named Norm G. Don’t be fooled by the bow tie and the little stache – this dude is baaaad. Honestly, I cannot imagine how Supergirl comes up with this stuff, but it amuses me, it really does.

You know what I said before? Like, yesterday? Well, fuggedaboutit. In the last twelve hours I’ve gone to Devil Baby’s spring concert and Supergirl’s spring concert and both were so dear, so sweet, so filled with chubby arms and tiny voices in the case of the former, boisterous joy and proud smiles in the case of the latter, that I take it all back about the too much. We can never have too much of this. This is what it’s all about. Some day, breathtakingly soon, we will have no more of these precious little concerts. So I drink it in, wishing there was some way to bottle the joy of children singing. Wouldn’t that be something!

I know I have a teensy little habit of taking something I’m experiencing and projecting it on the whole world, but something is definitely up. All my friends are feeling all freaky deaky, and quite frankly, so am I. We’re careening toward the end of the school year and I feel like we’re all driving runaway cars, pumping the breaks to no avail. Where did the time go? It feels like we were just wiping our brows after putting Christmas away and here we are in a deluge of end of the year obligations. Seriously, could we possibly pile on more stuff right now? End of the year masses, field day, plays, spring concerts, class picnics, graduations, class parties and on and on. On the one hand, it’s absolutely lovely. On the other hand, we may be getting too much of a good thing here. Everybody I know is racing around clutching camcorders with crazed smiles plastered on their faces which do nothing to hide the panic lurking in their eyes.

Yep, PANIC. Because in a few weeks we are ON, babies. ON. ON. ON. 24-7. Children all up in your business ALL THE TIME. No breaks, except for whatever camps and activities you’ve managed to sign them up for, which will require more running around with crazed smiles and more yelling hurry up, grab your waterbottleballracquetfishingrodclubscleatsclarinetloom.

I am really of two minds here. On the one hand, I love summer. I love the sun, the heat, the water and the not having to do anything. But then I went and filled us with activities because I’m no fool – the idle is not idyll. The quiet lazy afternoons never pan out the way I envision them. We don’t sit in the shade and eat popsicles and draw and fish and read. Possibly because of the frenetic pace we keep during the rest of the year, my kids want action and adventure. Or T.V. And honestly, we don’t even do that much. I suppose it’s relative, but I DO draw the line sometimes. For example, I drew the line at Irish step dancing earlier this year because of the wigs. I also draw the line at fencing, curling and golf. I don’t like golf. I’m not sure it’s an environmentally sustainable sport – especially in the driest areas of our country. It seems elitist and I will run the risk of subjecting my kids to forever being shitty golfers, but if they want to learn they can learn on their own time and their own dime. Plus the outfits are not cute. I pat myself on the back about golf, but then I signed up Supergirl for another run at Circus Camp, because obviously, the trapeze is a life skill that will serve her well. I signed Saint James up for a month long Junior Naturalist program and a drawing class. Why? Because this is their bliss and what can I do, but follow their bliss? And this is how I get myself in this pickle of the anti-Huck Finn summer.

It’s a paradox and I’m making a huge muddle of trying to explain it, but here it goes.

I sign them up for stuff because I don’t want them to be bored and drive me crazy, but in the end I’m crazy anyway and maybe even contributing to their being bored by keeping us on the run all the time. On the other hand, I only sign them up for stuff they love. These lucky, privileged children just happen to have a lot of interests. Take all that and dip it in guilt for not being 100% perky about all of this because a) I chose this life; and b) shouldn’t I want to be with my kids more more more? and c) I’m damn lucky to even have this to complain about, so I should just shut the hell up. Right? Right.

So I, like many others, spent the last few weeks with the calendar, various program catalogues and a furrowed brow, trying to figure out the right amount of stuff to put in our long summer days and how to physically get everyone where they need to go at the times they need to be there. I won’t know, until I’m neck deep in it, whether I got the right proportions of free time to camp time. And by then my freakydeakiness will have worn off, to be replaced with a numb exasperation with myself and my kids. The days will seem hot and endless and long and then all of a sudden it will be late August and I’ll get all freaky again, dreading the crush of school and all that entails, looking back longingly on our summer that seemed to stretch like taffy, and I’ll wish to be back here, right where I am right now.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all you sweet mamas out there, including my very own sweet mama, Chuchi. I don’t know about you, but I love Mother’s Day – more than my birthday, more than Christmas, more than Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. Being a mother is something I cherish (despite periodic appearances to the contrary) and it feels good to be fêted for something I’ve earned. I didn’t have much to do with being born and although I suppose we deserve to be congratulated for having survived another year, I don’t feel as comfortable wallowing in all the attention surrounding my birthday. But Mother’s Day is another story altogether. All those unseen and unappreciated things we do to keep our families healthy and happy and together, to keep our homes warm and bright and joyful, to keep ourselves sane and healthy and open, it all does deserve some recognition. We deserve to step out from behind the camera, stove and steering wheel for a day. I say, bring it on, lovies. Bring on the homemade breakfasts (delicious, Doctor Dash). Bring on the flowers and cards and little clay bowls and necklaces and paintings and all the dear dear things that little kids make for their mamas for Mother’s Day. I love it all. I even love the short story penned by Supergirl called “The Butt.” Last year, Saint James wrote me a song on the piano. This year, I get “The Butt.” It’s not about my butt, mind you, but riveting nonetheless.

And although I haven’t been able to spend Mother’s Day with my own mom for years, I think she knows, hope she knows, how much she means to me and how much my parenting mirrors hers. My house isn’t nearly as clean as hers, but in so many other ways, in ways that I can’t help, in ways that I don’t even notice, my mother colors the way I go through my days with my kids. I’m not a mirror image of her, but rather, of the same ilk. As if a painter did a series of paintings, variations on a theme, with obvious, superficial differences, but with a common thread – but what is the thread? Soul? Disposition? Habits? I’m not sure I can put a finger on it, but it’s there.

I’m not a mother who hides her emotions from the kids. For better or worse, they hear about the dark and the light. I’m a mother who thinks sitting down together for home cooked meals every single day that it’s remotely possible matters a lot. I’m a mother who’s indulgent, who believes in treats and pleasures and the beauty of saying yes some of the time. I’m impatient in so many ways, but I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to quell that in myself. I like plants and sun and watching my kids play sports. I don’t say the rosary in the car like my mom did for my brother’s nail biter tennis matches, but I gasp and eek and cover my eyes with the best of them. I don’t put a premium on my own perfection, but I do value solidity, reliability, warmth. I don’t let them touch my sunglasses, but I do let them play with my shoes. I’m not very subtle about trying to influence my kids to love the things I love: music, books, food. I leave sports to Doctor Dash. And technology. I’m bad at making my kids do chores; bad at taking money from them when they promise to pay me back. I’m a distracted mother a lot of the time, until those moments when I’m not. Be present is my mantra and my greatest seemingly insurmountable challenge.

I don’t like labels like “good” and “bad” as applied to mothering because I can be both within a span of moments. Motherhood is nuanced and complex and nothing short of a million words will do to describe any one particular mother. A million words. Or maybe just one.

Love.

Happy Mother’s Day to Chuchi and to all you other mamas in the trenches with me.

On Sunday afternoon I heard Devil Baby shrieking, and I mean shrieking: “I found some boobs! I found some boobs!” Surely, I wasn’t hearing her correctly. I ran outside and sure enough, she had found some boobs.

What do the three, er, people pictured have in common besides being singers and fame whores to varying degrees? In the last couple days it has dawned on me that they are all inextricably bound together in Devil Baby’s mind. At best, she’s getting them confused. At even better, she thinks they’re the same person.

The funny thing about a baby mind tangle, is that you kind of want to leave it alone, it’s so cute. A few weeks ago we were all talking about Michael Jackson and how he died, which led to a discussion of how Elvis died. Supergirl added the tidbit about his having died on the toilet, the ignominy of which Dash tried to temper with the clarification that he was probably throwing up as opposed to pooping. As is the case with most familial conversations, they just sort of meander along, and I don’t really pay too much attention to whom is actually paying attention. It turns out that Devil Baby is always paying attention. She also tends to speak in non-sequitors from time to time, so I don’t know if I even responded when later she asked So, the chipmunk died in the toilet?

A couple nights ago we tuned into American Idol. This is the first season to which we’ve payed attention and it’s because Saint James and Supergirl are interested. After the Olympics, I must admit it’s kind of nice to have an excuse to plop on the couch with the kids and watch TV. Adam Lambert was the special guest slash mentor and the theme for the singers was Elvis tunes. We watched. We groaned. We listened to the judges and piped in with our two cents’ worth. We went to bed. The next day I was driving Devil Baby home from pre-school when she started in from the car seat behind me: I really did NOT know Elvis was a Lambert! If only.

Our ensuing conversation went as such:

Me: Do you know who Elvis is?

Devil Baby: He’s a chipmunk.

Me: But what about the singer?

DB: He IS a singer.

Me: What about the singer we saw on American Idol last night?

DB: Mo-om, he’s ELVIS LAMBERT.

Me: So he’s not dead.

DB: He’s not dead.

Me: So who died on the toilet?

DB: (guffaws) Oh, dat chipmunk was so sick.

I seem to have tuckered myself out with my spring cleaning shenanigans. There’s an enviable pile of stuff on our front lawn for the ARC truck to take away, and yet the mess inside the house doesn’t seem in the least bit concerned. The micro-chaos, the day-to-day stuff, keeps on churning no matter what I swipe from under my kids’ noses to give away. The syrupy plates in the sink, the sweatshirts on the floor, the sidewalk chalk in the grass, the shower of tiny black pellets that spring out of St. James’ cleats and socks every time he has soccer practice, the mail, the pages and pages of drawings, scribbles, draft rap songs, and old homework that sprout like mushrooms wherever I look.

Our simple days in Tulum seem like a whole other life: one room, two beds and a cot, two suit cases, 2 stuffed animals per kid. Simple.

We had travelled to Mexico seeking warmth and sun as well as the chance to dip our toes in a different culture. We got those things in spades, but we also got a big dose of really pure family time. Simple. We stayed at Suenos, a lovely 12-room eco hotel that I can only describe as Swiss Family Robinson meets Frieda Kahlo. There were no paths between the thatch roof buildings – only soft, velvety sand, palm trees, bamboo groves and artfully placed hammocks and grinning skulls. I feel like I’ve been searching for a place like this my whole life. Everything, from the sturdy wooden beds, to the Mexican painted toilets and sinks, to the colorful woven bedspreads, to the multi-colored blown glass lamps in the gardens, seems to be handcrafted out of beautiful organic materials.

Our room was small, so small that Doctor Dash and I had doubts about surviving the week at first, but in a lesson about how much we don’t need (tons of space, giant piles of towels, a closet full of clothes, a pantry stocked with snacks, computers, toys, TVs) it turned out to be perfect. Our room was comfortable and chic and aside from nights, there were only a handful of times we were all in it together, lolling and chatting on the beds, taking a break from the sun and wind. Truly lovely.

Our pared down surroundings and the absence of TV allowed us to simply BE. Like everyone, we’re always busy running from one thing to the next. Even when we’re home, there’s noise – TV, music, youTube, neighbor kids. It was good to detox from all of that stuff and just be. Be together. Dash remarked that it felt like camping since we were up with the sun in the mornings and falling into bed exhausted at night. A couple nights the kids went crab hunting on the beach with flashlights and we marveled at the star studded sky in the absence of urban light. Our stay felt low tech, low impact, low light (all solar energy), although we were hardly roughing it. It was abundant and indulgent in the things that mattered: warm ocean, big surf, soft sand, hot sun, gorgeous views, idle playtime and killer food.

And ay chihuaha cosita sabrosa we feasted like kings. Breakfast at Suenos was strong coffee, copious fruit platters, granola, yogurt and pastries in the gorgeous open air two-story palapa with a view of the sea. For lunch we’d either crawl back up there or stroll down the beach to one of the other open-air, shoes-optional, restaurants that dot the beach. The only time we put on sandals and flip-flops was when we got in the car to go to town or on a day trip. We ate tacos and tostadas and quesadillas with fresh fish, shrimp, beef and cheese. We never asked them to hold the pico de gallo, beans or guacamole, and the kids ate way out of their comfort zone – with gusto. Blame it on the big waves, the sea air, or, more likely, the lack of constant snacks, but they were hungry when mealtimes came and willing to eat green and red things they would never have eaten at home. At night we’d venture into town to walk around the crowded colorful streets and found three outstanding Italian restaurants, any one of which I would love to have here in Minneapolis. Again, meat sauce, tomato sauce, the kids gobbled it up. Could it be that butter noodles are a thing of the past for us? I can only hope.

One of my favorite moments was coming up from the beach and finding my kids standing with a man weilding a machete. They were each clutching a coconut, waiting their turns and watching with wide eyes while Jorge hacked open coconuts for them to drink. They had scoured the beach for coconuts with their pals from San Fransisco and found a way to convey what they were after to the friendly owners.

As one day slid onto the next, our kids managed to do everything and nothing at the same time. They befriended the motley crew of Mexican dogs that guarded the place. They made a fort in the bamboo and buried each other in the sand. They snorkled, climbed Mayan ruins and tracked spider monkeys through the jungle in a nature preserve. They crashed their little bodies into the surf for hours at a time. Once a day, Saint James would get creamed by an especially harsh wave and emerge from the water sputtering and muttering that he’d had enough, only to be drawn back in within the hour. He stalked lizards and iquanas and played soccer on the beach, finding his legs in the slow slippery sand. Supergirl explored every nook and cranny of the property, collected coconuts and drew faces on them. Devil Baby remembered that she knows how to swim and ruled the pool. And Dash and I? We did everything and nothing too. But mostly nothing – if by nothing you mean watching and smiling and trying, trying so hard to remember every sound, every color, every moment of Tulum.