Hot to Trot

I am the sticky strands of hair on the forehead of summer.

There is nothing I like better than warm weather, but I am melting like mochi in the hot pot of the pacific.

I constantly feel like I am at that exact point before sweat. Too hot and no breeze to bring me relief. The famous Hawaii trades seem to have shriveled up and died. The acid in my stomach sits right in my throat as if to taunt me further with any possible burning sensation. My feet radiate about 5 degrees hotter than the rest of my body.

All day long I eat popsicles, gorge on fruit, make trips for ice cream, and chug milk (this may be why I’ve gained 8 pounds in 4 weeks). I take multiple cold showers. I keep the fan pointed on me every second. I loathe washing the dishes or even moving around in general. We wade at the beach. Kahana Valley’s ice cold pools barely make a dent in my temperature. We eat dinner outside.

At night I eat Tums every few hours and chug more milk at 2 in the morning. I am never cold and leave sweat puddles on the bed. Jake isn’t even warmer than me.

I’ve considered nudity. Ice shoes. Driving to town just so I can sit in the air conditioned car. There is no end to my nutty ideas.

This baby is cooking me for 5 more weeks. And then we’ll be on to post partum hormonal hot flashes.

What She Said

When we told Amaya to stop making repetitive noises in the back seat, she said, “I’m not a talking person. I’m a whoo-ing person.”

When we told her that she wasn’t allowed to have a treat and that we were the bosses, she said, “Then I want some new parents, right now.”

When we were in Foodland, she suddenly said, “P-E-N-I-S!” I glanced at her very quickly so as not to give her any attention. I have never said the word to her so I figured she was just babbling and just so happened on that combination. She looked at me very seriously and yelled loudly, “P-----! P-----! P-----!” while everyone turned to look at us.

When I asked Amaya to get my cell phone for me off the table, she said, “No. You get off your butt and get it yourself.”

And then I said, “Oh, baby, you are going in time out right now.”

Someone came in and replaced my 3-year-old with a teenager.

It’s too bad we don’t use time-out with teenagers.

Daddy Dear

This is one of my favorite clips from Sesame Street and I think it’s totally appropriate because Jake has become Amaya’s primary language teacher. And Amaya likes to stall anything she doesn’t want to do.

Jake is the best dad. He has really good play time energy. He knows exactly how to get Amaya excited. He understands kid humor way better than I do and he’s the fun parent (but luckily he includes me so that I won’t be the bad guy, either).

Being a parent is hard. It’s hard to tell when to push and when to give. A few weeks ago Amaya was crying that she was hungry right as we were taking her to bed and we didn’t want to give in because she wasn’t very focused at dinner time and didn’t want to eat what we gave her. She started crying, flailing and yelling about being hungry as we forced her into her room. Jake decided to grab her a piece of apple that she had started earlier and brought her some water. She desperately ate and drank in big, quiet sobbing gulps as we sat in the dark by her bed. She was so sad and so hungry the whole scene was like watching a prisoner get his crust of bread. Afterwards we talked about it and we were kind of laughing and crying at the same time. It breaks your heart to think that your kid may ever have to suffer especially when there are so many real reasons in the world for suffering.

I love raising a family with this guy. It’s weird how you don’t grasp how important these qualities are when you’re dating and even when you’re married without kids. You think, “Oh, yeah, I think he’ll make a good dad,” but that is way bigger once the kid actually shows up. You can’t even see it until it happens. Someone told me once that she didn’t realize how lucky she was until way after she was married. All the qualities that had attracted her to her spouse became much less important.She was surprised at how well it worked out that he could pull off being a father and a husband, since she didn’t even know, didn’t even fathom, he could really be that.

I get that, now. Happy Father’s Day, Jake.

Camp

When I was buying all of our camping equipment, I asked Jake if I should get sleeping pads.

Sleeping pads are really unnecessary, Jake said. They take up a lot of space. Plus they’re for wimps.

I thought, yeah, you’re right. Better to be a minimalist.

Well, I barely got a wink of sleep last night. My hips felt like they were digging trenches in the dirt.

Oh, that’s right. They were. Then I thought, wait a sec, I already know I’m a wimp. What was I trying to prove?

We’re Jacksons so we don’t do car camping. We don’t do running water, dutch ovens, flashlights, or sleeping pads. (It’s really no wonder Jake hates sleeping outside.)

No, we walk up to the campsite and make our 3-year-old walk the whole way, with her own backpack, and she screams and cries and says that she’s sleepy every 10 seconds. And when we’re not looking, she picks up rocks/sticks/pieces of plastic and puts them in her mouth, just to get back at us.

Here’s the real Jackson. Didn’t even bring extra clothes. Just one shirt. We just watch while he makes the fire (Luckily, Jacksons do bring a lighter, if they remember one. We’re not that hard core.).

What I love about camping: hobo dinners (I have no idea why, but I love this meal), s’mores, firelight in the evening, and the fact that we were able to escape the heat our our house. For a little while.

Except for the not-sleeping part, we made the most of our 14 hour trek into the wilderness. That’s all I could handle, since I had to take like a 4 hour nap in our bed today. I also really like my dutch oven and that it sits in my cupboard and I don’t have to carry it anywhere. And that I don’t have to gather tons of wood for one meal. And that I don’t burn everything. 

I guess I like a little camp. And then a lot of home.

When I’m bigger

“When I’m bigger I can go to the drugstore,” said Amaya.

“And buy what?” I asked.

“A rug.”

Since I opened my big mouth and remarked on the fact that Amaya slept for 10 hours 3 days in a row, she woke up nice and early today. She is really loving this no routine thing except for the 1 alphabet lesson we have a day.

She’s not allowed to watch a show until she does her letters, and she actually elected to hold off on that almost the whole day. Although I prefer that she doesn’t watch any shows, I felt slightly dismayed that she would rather not get to watch a show the whole day long than do a 5 minute lesson.

Amaya is extremely good at remembering what I read to her. She memorizes verbatim phrases and sentences from her library books. After 2 readings she was reading Little Critter’s “When I’m bigger” back to me. Speaker tags and all. She even gets what those speaker tags are for. So it does seem strange that she is easily frustrated by letters. Some mornings I’ll wake up to Jake saying, “No, D IS FOR DRUMS, not B!” She sings the They Might Be Giants song over and over to herself all day long and then it’s like she really is John and she has NO idea what letter is for drums. And she will guess numbers before she hits D. I think she thinks letters are pretty tricky.

Everyone says, “Don’t worry, she’ll learn it eventually.” Yeah. I know. The problem is, someone has to teach her, and that’s the stressful part.

She’s been loving when I take pictures of her. She’s trying out all her poses.

 

Here’s her trying to do Shaka. Yes. I know. I didn’t teach her that, I promise. 

Staycate

I am so loving this summer. Normally I’m itching to get out of here for a while because Jake’s busy and Amaya and I have long days of staring at each other and heat and uselessness, but since I’m 8 weeks from the due date I have to stick around. And we’ve been making the most of it. Jake’s on vay-cay right now, too, and that makes it so much better.

I usually say, Jake doesn’t like to be on vacation, but really, what I’m realizing is, Jake doesn’t like to be out of Hawaii. He is the perfect person to be on vacation with, in Hawaii.

I know, it’s a bit silly, I mean, I’m on staycation in Hawaii. We live in the perfect balance of rural paradise and modern convenience.

Plus the best collection of Japanese food outside of Japan. In the last week I’ve had perfect Yakiniku, fresh cream pan (and a lot of other delectables) from the Japanese bakery, and crisp tempura teishoku. Then there’s the Hawaii summer fruit. We’re just starting out and I’ve had lychee, strawberries, and pineapple by the bowlful. The mango is close behind. And then it will be mountain apple.

You do remember that I have to eat tons when I’m on vacation, right?

Jake’s been letting me sleep in, carries Amaya to the beach, watches “Friday Night Lights” with me, lets me nap whenever, and makes lots of suggestions for dates. It’s lovely.

It’s so perfect that I almost very nearly totally forgot that I have lots of things to do for school. Oh, yeah, and I’m going to have a baby. I should probably do something about that, too.

I Hope Not.

“You’re kind of fat.”

"I have a baby inside my tummy.”

“Oh. Your baby is kinda fat, yeah?”

On the Other Side

After a horrific 72 hour tantrum, we made it through the weekend. And now Amaya has settled down to normal levels of naughty-ness. The kind we laugh about and take pictures of. I think she sensed that both Jake and I were at our limits.

Jake said, “I can tell what kind of day it is just from the way she wakes up.”

And it’s so true. As long as waking up does not involve poop and time out behavior, we have a good day.

Here’s Amaya “going to my meeting".

And light saber outside after our dinner picnic.

It helps that all day long it’s popsicles, fruit raids, bike rides, backyard picnics, library trips, sprinklers, beach expeditions, shows and 1 itty bitty 5 minute lesson on the alphabet. Namely, the letter A, which we’ve been stuck on for about a month now. We’ve tried to move to other letters, but it results in the same issues, so we’ve decided to stick with A. A is for Amaya. But A is tricky. It changes to other letters no matter how many times it has been A, and sometimes numbers, apparently.

That 5 minutes is torturous, but somehow, we get through it. Then it’s back to blueberries in cups and playdough all over the kitchen table.