Finn's Lego Cake

I think we can all agree that creating blog posts in an order that in some way reflects or acknowledges that time passes in only one direction, and is restricted to commenting on subjects in the same order as they've occurred in the "real world" (massive air quotes) is a totally bourgeois concept. At least, I hope we agree that, because I realize that I've posted a picture of Finn's 8th birthday cake without ever having posted one of his 7th. It's amazing to do that, if only because the cake from a year ago reflects his absolute passion and obsession, which is frankly something that he could now give or take. It's hard to see in the moment of an all consuming passion that these things pass, and pass quickly. That being said, we still have eight billion pieces of lego in the house, and Finn still enjoys creating large tanker vessels with cleverly constructed internal storage areas large enough to hold my keys, Lisa's wallet, or the TV remote. Still, the passion's just not what it used to be. Even since six months ago, he's moved from the Titanic to Skylanders and (somewhat amazingly) getting enough best times in swimming to earn a medal from the swim team. He's got one three races left and one more best time to get what he wants. If he doesn't earn the medal, I may make one for him out of lego. Or maybe Lisa could make one out of fondant - it can't be any harder than making all of those individual lego pieces out of the stuff.

In which we consider our age

So, our friends have started turning 40. Actually, who am I kidding, most of our friends are already 40 - we're sort of at the tail end. But another one did turn 40 recently, though that in and of itself was not so surprising. He's the kind of guy who's always seemed grown up in the way that we imagined adults to have been in earlier times; he addresses his oldest boy as "Son", he believes strongly in corporal punishment, and he's convinced that no matter his creaking knees, he would be an all star if he were allowed to play in the WNBA. He's also one of those guys who's had grey hair since he was 28, and as he turns 40 is rocking a sort of hybrid Anderson Cooper/John Wayne look - gravitas has come pretty naturally to him, which came to his advantage in the cut-throat world of Oakland public school PTA politics. So anyway, this friend just turned 40, and his wife threw him a massive party. He's one of 8 kids, so family alone would make for a big party, but he had to rent a park in order to fit in all of his friends. Lisa, being awesome, offered to make him a cake, a picture of which is attached. The bottom layer is your typical old guys shaking canes and presumably shouting something along the lines of "Get off my lawn!" The middle layer is a box of depends, the top a prescription bottle of Viagra. Every kid at the party, and there were many, demanded a blue candy to eat. Every grown up at the party, at one time or another, tried to get our friend to pose while eating a blue pill - he graciously ate about 40 of them, to the mortification of his wife. So being 1974 babies, our year is next year. I won't be able to make her a cake like this, but it doesn't matter, as she's made me promise I'll always tell everyone she's 27. I'm OK with that, as long as she makes me a cake for my birthday.

Steampunk

What is steampunk, you ask? I consulted a noted expert in the field, who responded "Steampunk is science-fiction set in the past, usually in the Victorian era, and all the technological developments of our time have been recreated using steam power and clockwork." The noted expert then pointed out that he was no longer into steampunk, and now prefers video games and mythology. That's the fault of the blog author - a ten month delay between cake creation and posting may lead to cakes describing enthusiasms long since past. He will be 11 in a couple of months, closer to college than to cradle, and I'm reminded that even glancing away for a moment, I look back and see a bigger, different, more grown up kid. That being said, Lisa did a rather amazing job of coming up with a clockwork cake. She made the gears out of gum paste and then painted them to look metallic, and the cake body is designed to look like a wooden casket.

Trans-Atlantic Journeys

So I just got back from a week in London. I left SFO on a Sunday (from the middle of a swim meet) and arrived just in time for the start of the workday. The trip was productive, though after 10+ years of kids and marriage, it felt very strange to wander the streets of such a great city by myself. I'm so used to the ongoing conversation, the feeling of a hand slipping into mine, the demand for a bathroom at an inopportune time, that walking silently and alone made the relatively familiar streets of the City feel slightly alien. The trip back was a daytime flight, and I couldn't remember if one is supposed to sleep or stay up on the return journey. I did, however, remember that the purpose of unaccompanied flights is to watch the movies that one would never get one's spouse to consent to at home. And so, I would describe my return journey as follows: Parker (heist/revenge movie starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez); Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (words cannot describe how stupid this movie is. As the kind of person who was ready to love this movie based on its title alone, the fact that I found this movie incredibly lame speaks poorly of every aspect of it. I also note that the ending leaves it open for a sequel); Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise as ghostlike ex-army bad-ass who travels the country by greyhound, paying cash for tickets and kicking ass for justice); [interlude - episode of Game of Thrones in which no-one of consequence died. Having read the books, I find this hard to fathom. Were they just filming 10 pages from book 2?}; and Stardust (Clare Danes & Michelle Pfeiffer in a Neil Gaiman classic, with Robert DeNiro camping it up hugely as a closeted campy sky-pirate). I'm not sure how you the reader would describe this journey, but I think the principle stands - if you're doing a solo trans-atlantic trip, try and make it as fun as you can.

I will note that my younger son was until quite recently, also obsessed with trips across the Atlantic. Actually, it was just one trip, and it didn't even make it all the way across. For over a year, all books on his shelf were Titanic related. He would draw the Titanic for art class and thank you cards. He built models of the Titanic. We went to the Titanic museum (conveniently located in Southampton, home of his grandparents) and learned about the engineering failures that lead to the sinking, and tried to allocate seats of the lifeboats people in the fairest way (he was indignant that all of the 1st class women and children lived, but the 3rd class did not do nearly as well). And so while this obsession is fading now (curse you, Skylanders), back in February it was still in full swing, and so his birthday was celebrated with a Titanic cake. Trans-Atlantic plane trips seem to last forever, but eight years has gone by unbelievably fast. Happy (belated) birthday Finn.

Most definitely not a princess

Our youngest is somewhat of a style iconoclast. Given that she wears a lot of puffy, flouncy, ruffled dresses (often more than one at the same time), many people will approach her and ask if she's a princess. This will make her angry, for these people have clearly missed the the magic wand (a stick with pieces of string tied to it), the wings (another dress, tied over her shoulders), the magic charms (dora bracelets and hair clips) and fairy belts (pieces of ribbon tied around waist). Imperiousness and natural hauteur aside, he is a fairy, and occassionally a ballerina, but she is not a princess. There are several advantages to being the parent of a fairy, specifically: 1) Fairies don't wear diapers 2) Fairies don't sleep in cribs 3) Fairies eat vegetables. However, there are some downsides: 1) Fairies, apparently, also don't wear socks or t-shirts. Only dresses. And they are super picky about the underwear that they do wear. 2) Fairies don't wear pajamas either. They wear a lot of dresses to bed, and when they wake up at 4 a.m. and need to pee, their fathers have to act the part of valet and get them out of (and back into) their regalia. 3) Fairies think that they should have bunk beds, just like their brothers, and get kind of complainy when the bunk bed they want doesn't magically appear. 4) Fairies don't really eat their vegetables, they mostly just try to throw their broccoli on the floor. But they really, really want candy. In the balance, being the father of a fairy is actually pretty great - magical even. And for Aoife's 3rd birthday, Lisa made what was determined to be a fairy ballerina cake. Aoife liked it so much that she's declared that she will be having at least two more birthdays this year, and that her brothers will have none. Sounds kind of like a princessy thing to say, but don't tell her I said that.

E'mo Take

So the littlest one just turned two, but in terms of cultural awareness is lightyears ahead of where the boys were at the same age.  Good Berkeley wannabes that we are, when the boys were two there was little household awareness of candy, nor television, nor any other corrupting influence that would lead them on the road to perdition.  But playdates that consist of two hours of nintendo are hard to battle, candy so omnipresent, and the power of kids whining so grating, that we've gradually succumbed, and our boys will now watch TV and consume things with the word "Froot" on the label.  And Aoife has learned.  She will now elbow her way past her brothers to get to the TV, and demand 'can'y' if she sees anything that seems even vaguely reminiscent of sweets (things prompting her to demand candy include, but are not limited to: novelty erasers, lego bricks, a brightly colored roll of duct tape, an orange vase, and a book about flower fairies).  She has learned about Sesame Street, and now she worships at the alter of Elmo (or E'mo, as he's called in these parts, who actually does some pretty good work on youtube - I highly recommend Elmo and Feist singing '1-2-3-4').  When it came time for her birthday, Aoife was not able to correctly answer her new age (two - she was still convinced she was one) or identify her gender (she will not acknowledge that girls exist - everyone, including her, is a boy), but she was quite clear that for her birthday, she wanted two things: puh-puh boons (trans: purple balloons) and E'mo take (Elmo cake).  Happy to divide the labor, I purchased a dozen purple balloons (with purple strings even) while Lisa performed the easier task and made an Elmo cake.  As you can see below, it's pretty good.  Shame I don't have a picture of the balloons - they were spectacular. 

Not the Stingray that killed Steve Irwin

So the boys belong to a swim team. And I mean belong in more than just a "pay the money, get the lessons" kind of way, but I'll elaborate on that in a minute. I used to swim a lot when I was a kid, leading up to a point where I was training 12-14 times a week, plus meets. I burned out, which happened to coincide with moving to the US, and more on point, to a small school that had no swim team, and a climate that didn't allow for much swimming when school was in session anyway. I was pretty good, but never the best, and I remember how the coaches always had extra time for the kids who were really, really good. Which I guess I never really thought much about, other than thinking that's how things were, and if you wanted more coaching you'd better swim faster.

So my kids are not excellent swimmers. Part of it is our fault - we started them pretty late - and part of it is that bell curve distributions of talent mean that you can move several standard deviations either direction from the mean. But they try hard, and they've improved vastly. I no longer fear their drowning, and I'm incredibly proud that they keep trying even knowing that they're not likely to win a race or go to county or get a gold time.

So, circling back to the first sentence, the boys really belong to this swim team. They may not be the fastest, but they're treated no differently than those who are. The coaches are largely local high school kids, and they're nice to the swimmers in a way that no-one expects teenagers to be. They're kind, and encouraging, and patient and they coach the kid who is lining up in heat 10, lane 7 all the way up to the block and cheer him through every turn and to the end of each race. The senior coaches lead by example, and their expectations are based on listening, improving and trying hard - they don't let the slow kids slack off, which is important too - they respect them enough to hold them accountable. And they coach things like congratulating the kid in the lane next to you and cheering for your teammates in the other heats, stuff that goes beyond making your kid a better swimmer, stuff that shows you that they understand that being a good kid is as important as being a fast swimmer.

Anyway, the head coach of the team is a guy named Brad. He's been tied to the pool since he was younger than my kids are now, and last Friday was his 30th birthday. There was a meet on Friday, and a dance (a "Neon Disco" actually) afterwards, and some of the folks asked Lisa to make a cake to celebrate. And so here it is, in all of it's neon glory. As you my have guessed from the blog post title (and from the giant gum paste and rice-crispie treat Neotrygon Kuhlii atop the cake) the swim team is the Stingrays, with the ginger beard a hat-tip to Brad's facial stylings. Happy birthday to Brad, and thanks to all of the coaches for making the team what it is.