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| Eva invented this face she calls "Meeeaaaan Bunny". Do NOT cross her. |
OK. So I adore my little one, Eves. She is six going on sixteen and she is hilarious and curious and irreverent and she LOVES nature and she has a great tan and she quotes me back to myself and she has great hair and front teeth with a gigantic space and skin in between them and she is imaginative and she sings and hums to herself ALL THE TIME, like when she is putting on her clothes or eating raspberries, but best of all she will CUT you if you piss her off enough.
She was sitting at lunch the other day and she was all "UMMMM I just LOVE BLT's. CanIhavesomemoremayoniase,please?" She says that last part rapid fire, and she cocks her head and bats her eyes at me, and I calmly hand her the mayo knife that is rife with extra mayonnaise, and she cleans that sword like a serial killer. No shit. I was right there.
I then turn my back for a split second and her older sisters start screaming and I am wheeling around slow like I always do as I sigh, and Eva is full on pinching a plug out of her sister's leg and simultaneously elbowing the other. It was disturbing and impressive at the same time.
I exclaim, "Oh my Gawd, what were the two of you doing to my sweet baby girl that would make her have to retaliate like that!"
Mills says, "Nothing, MOM, she does this now when we are just sitting here." Mills' eyes are welling with the delivery, as she massages her cherry apple red leg. I CANNOT WAIT until that chil' is old enough to go to Bollywood and fulfill all my dreams of being a regular on a Telenovela.
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| Natural born Spanish actress. |
I imagine her bringing me to the equivalent of the Daytime Emmys in Mexico City, and we exit our low rider limo with the neon lights emanating from the undercarriage to an expansive red carpet just FILLED with Spanish speaking reporters. I took Espanol from third grade to my senior year in college and I just CANNOT get enough second language experience with the waiters and waitresses at El Vaquero. All I get to say is like, "Gracias" and "Como' estas?" and "Queso, por favor!" I mean, I need to IMMERSE myself in a culture to really get my Spanglish groovin', ya' dig?
Case in point. Brad and I went to Playa del Carmen, once, when we lived in Dallas. It was before kids and we rented this insane house with a rooftop view of the ocean in a gated and albeit, "secured" community (Read: guarded by soldiers with machine guns) and we had a maid that I would give my American inspired taco lunches to, as I practiced my Spanglish with her, because I felt like an asshole who rents homes in a machine gun secured community with a maid, and I was only like twenty-eight years old.
One day we were getting ready for the beach and our maid comes in with REAL Mexican food to thank me and Brad yells up to me, "Juana, can you come down here because I can't understand a gawddamned word she is sayin'!"
I caught the bug. I need to now talk to a bevy of reporters in Mexico City about how my precious Millsuego was DESTINED to be a Latino Soap Opera star all of her life. In this dream scenario, she is dating a Drug Lord that provides me with slinky look-a-like ensembles that Michelle Pfeiffer wore in Scarface, for events such as the Mexican Emmy's and the like.
I digress. ANYWAY, Eva has hung out with nine to thirteen-year-olds ALL summer. She is SIX. I keep telling her to "ERASE everything you have learned this summer and when you go to first grade you are need to pretend like you are like all of the rest of them."
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| Eves, on top of the lighthouse right after she let her flip flop fall. |
Eva looks all perplexed and then Hallie illustrates the point by saying, "Like for instance, don't tell your teacher that you saw Grown Ups on vacation this summer, tell her you saw Monsters University like you did, which is a only a lie by OMISSION, which is not a REAL lie."
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| Wise Hallie. Just breakin' it down for her little sis. |
Well played. It's important that as a family that we are ALL in on the conspiracy.
ANYWAY, cause I can't stop bloggin' about my gurl, Eves, we are on vacation in Georgia and it is our first night and we have walked to the pier where all the cheesy, I mean, esoteric restaurants and shops are, and we sidle into this place run by two young Asian girls who rarely speak English words other than, "You like turtle. Turtle cute. You buy more than one package, you get discount," and being a large Vodka in, I start working on Brad to buy three. Being the big bad MAN of the house, he declares, "Let's go eat dinner and then go to the Beach and we'll discuss it."
Now, I don't know if you read my blog on the demise of Mills' hermit crabs on previous vacations, but I am not responsible enough to harbor amphibians or crustaceans or really humans, for that matter.
I don't CARE. We made it 12 hours in 14, stopping overnight ONCE and I am ELATED.
The kids whine and complain that they can't take the tiny swimming frogs to dinner because they are patient and humble and appreciative and then we go to an outdoor picnic table of a restaurant that specializes in raping first time vacationers of their innocence by serving up incredibly strong drinks and a variety of seafood that all tastes like chicken fingers.
While we are waiting for the food and snapping Instagram shots of each other, the topic of tiny swimming turtles reaches the surface, yet again. Go figure. Didn't see THAT coming for a mile away, swear.
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| Seemed like a good idea at the time. |
IWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANTIWANT" is all I hear at this point - in a constant stream until it become just one long tone.
"Listen," I say, loud enough to be heard against the background noise of their incessant whining,
"No one really has any money to buy a turtle except Eva." Eva was not invited to either the "Tayylour Swiifft concert, nor 1 Diretshun concert that was Hallie and Mills' repourt cawd appreciashun gift at the end of the year and I have calculated that that adds up to at LEAST a new American Guuuul doll, and there is a stowe openin' at Easton in June." and then she got a barstool in the kitchen and circled the date of it's Grand Opening on the wall calendar she hand made me in K Club. This is what I'm talkin' 'bout, y'all. Are ya' fuuullin' me?
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| She will CUT YOU. |
Now, let's back up. You know I took all three of them a few weeks back to the American Girl store on a random Wednesday afternoon, a week after the opening (I'm a sucka, but not completely delusional) and after weeks of extensive research on their website, Eva was to pick out her doll. Once inside for 45 painful minutes of browsing, she coyly defers and walks out of the store because she didn't realize that the "guuuall of the year" is only sold in the year that the girl has the title, and in order to obtain a Girl of years past, you need to go onto Ebay and pay THREE times the price to get her.
Eva was not impressed and she was not ABOUT to blow her wad on some bullshit "Just like Me American Girl" with brown eyes and highlighted hair. Eves is the modern day six-year-old Tony Montana (Scarface reference, again), and she has suffered bigger fools than THIS. Say hello to my little friends, beeeaacchhhes.
So, let's get back to our story. We are at the sad oversized picnic table and Brad says, "Listen, Eva, you basically have a hundred dollars to spend. That is A LOT OF MONEY. Each of the turtles is roughly twenty five dollars. You can either buy just yourself a turtle and have fifty dollars left (he is a GENIUS at child-centered mathematics - always discount, peeps, always) OOOORRRRR you can buy BOTH your sisters turtles and then you have nothing left. I see my Mathematically challenged nine and eleven-year-olds furiously trying to solve Brad's equation to no avail.
A hush comes over the table and all eyes are on Eva. She smiles a broad Cheshire Cat-like smile. She's got everyone right where she wants them. The characters on the Tudors don't wield this much power.
Tony Montana ponders this, as her anxious sisters lock arms with her and raise their eyebrows and start in on a littany of things they have both done for her... and then Eva throws her arms up in the air in a "V" with her little chipped red, white and blue glittered fingertips pressed together and exclaims, "TUUUURRRTLLES FO' EVRAYONE!"
You cannot HELP but draw parallels between this tiny brown child and her future self as a scantily clad Freshman in college ordering shots because she just got her first Student Loan check.
Sooooo, just to bring things home, we now own three tiny swimming turtles that reside in my kitchen and live in this tiny plastic apparatus littered with sea shells and rocks we found on vacation that I have to change the water every three days because it is just FILLED with turtle shit and stinks up the whole house, and every morning I wake up to make my coffee and every evening I am making three ice waters, I have to endure THIS National Geographicesque scene, as I wait for the offspring.
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| It's a little grainy, but then all good porn is. |
I have since learned that the little bastards live for 10-15 years and that they procreate at an alarming rate.
Let me tell you, there WILL be TUUURRTTTLLEES FO' EVERYONE. EVERYONE I know is getting a turtle for every holiday I can think up.
So, I guess my advice to you today is to lose my number, because otherwise you have a tuuurrrtttlle with your child's name on it.