Growing Pains

Back in December, Native1 went on his first sleep over. He had a blast and started asking when we could host one. Omicron picked up steam and Gatherer just didn't feel like being that guy that caused a super spreader event at the school so I said "later" with no real time line as to what that meant. Native1 and Hunter pestered enough for me to cave and finally agree to a date. For those of you unaware, Growing Pains is one of my favorites by Ludacris. It's a song about growing up with your crew as kids, and while my Natives live a far cry from living a hard life and surviving anything other than a nice boring suburban neighborhood...I think finding your crew at any place in life is a beautiful thing.

We hosted the event at our cave this past weekend, and let me tell you, we had a cave with 5 very loud, very excited Natives in it. It was the most adorable and nerve fraying thing ever. I don't post pictures of my Natives often, and I certainly won't post other cave's Natives here but let's just say I was picking up nerf bullets barely as fast as the wildlife was trying to eat them (why does my dog have a death wish in eating Styrofoam with plastic tips?, is her food not delicious?). Gatherer made spaghetti and my natives were not the only ones to complain and only want buttered plain noodles. Gatherer required sauce but second helpings were welcome to be noodles only. Hunter has assured me that the normal spaghetti I make is good, that its just a weird native thing to want bland carbohydrates all the time. I baked cookies but seeing as the palettes of the natives aren't particular discerning, they got premade chocolate chip dough that just needed a throw in the cave fire. Midnight rolled around and the older natives were wiiiiiddddeeee awake. Native2 was even requesting (read demanding) that I make them go to sleep. Have you ever tried to make a pack of wild natives do anything they weren't in the mood for? I lost the battle, I have no idea what time they eventually stopped giggling and went to sleep. I would like to add that while I made sure to arrange for comfortable nest for all natives, they wanted to sleep on the cave floor. They didn't even want me provide fluffy nesting for the floor (I made those heathens at least sleep on top of sleeping bags, I was not about to have them telling their parents I didn't at least try to make them sleep in beds). Do you think they sleep in the next morning....no. no. they. did. not. Six am. Up wide awake ready to play minecraft. Hunter ran away to a coaching workshop so I fed the never hungry natives a breakfast pizza. Which of course was definitely sus food in their opinion, but they were brave and took a whole bite (note to self, at this age it is fine to buy one breakfast pizza, they will not eat me out of house and cave like locusts yet). When it was time to leave not a single native wanted to go back to their own cave, so I believe I successfully managed to provide ample opportunities for fun and debauchery while keeping them safe(ish).

Saturday we spent time with some friends from back when I wasn't smart enough to advocate for flexible scheduling and had to do daycare so Gatherer could work to pay for daycare. Now I'm smart and just work mostly from home and drop off and pick up the natives. I'm thankful for our early daycare days because we met this great group of parents and while some of us only see each other a few times a year, we have a great time with them. Our natives are better than we are and apparently use their electronic devices to actually like keep in touch and play games and talk to each other almost daily so at least my natives are social even if I maybe think about returning a text once a month. Sunday was soccer as usual Gatherer thought she might share how far down the "I'm a soccer mom" identity I've gone so y'all can laugh at my level of super fan for a 10 year old's soccer team. I'm not saying I bought faux converses and a watch band to match his team...but I definitely did. Not pictured, the minivan I drive because I'm so cool.