The Wesley Diaries : March 2018

This year, as is our tradition, we headed to the Quaker Center at Ben Lomond so Stevo could teach at HEART. We went with Wessy last year and had gone together for a few years pre-Wessy as well. The Quaker Center is an amazing place--set among the redwood groves outside of Santa Cruz. It made for a very fun place to let Wessy run (kind of) wild. Our first stop on our way in was Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. While we were there, a pod of blue whales was breaching just off the beach. I don't think Wessy noticed, but it was an impressive sight. Here we are contemplating the sea:

Our contemplation quickly turned to engagement with the sand. Wessy loves playing in the sand. He will spend longer playing in the local sandbox than doing almost anything else. So you can imagine how he feels about the PLAYA.

I almost didn't bring his CAMIONES but at the last minute I think Stevo said something offhand about going to the beach and Wessy quickly and firmly insisted that the CAMIONES were coming. He was also very interested in the local flora and fauna including all manner of ALGAS MARINAS.

After 2.7 years and twelvity billion pictures of Stevo and Wessy together, I finally prevailed upon Stevo to take some pictures of me and Wessy. This was probably the best of the bunch:

Another esteemed toy who enjoys the beach is BIZCOCHO. Bizcocho is a translucent pink plastic duck with little silicone wheels whose original incarnation was as some sort of back massager. Bizcocho means "Biscuit" and the origin of the duck's name is the series of children's books about a golden retriever puppy of the same name. Anyway, bottom line is that Bizcocho enjoys a good beach day.

After a bit in Santa Cruz, we headed into Ben Lomond and got settled at the retreat center. It was the first night and it was taking awhile for dinner to come together. To say Wessy was restless was a vast understatement. He ate 20 lbs of pretzels and careened around the main gathering room alternating trying to peer off the deck and pet the wood-burning stove until dinner was finally served. It was a delicious stew.

Wessy impressed the fourth year medical students with his Spanish, but soon it was bedtime. We were all bunking down in a tiny one-room cabin. For us, this was a bit cramped and challenging. For Wessy, who had his portable crib in the center of the room, it was the best possible situation. He stayed up far later than usual, alternately babbling very happily to himself in his crib and asking us random questions in the dark, "DONDE ESTA PAPA?" "DONDE ESTA SANTA CRUZ?" "DONDE ESTA TU JABON?" "QUE PASO A TU JABON MAMA?"

The next morning, we ALL woke up bright and early, as I was to teach yoga at 7am. Stevo went ahead and made a fire in the wood-burning stove at the Casa De Luz, which is a gorgeous meeting/meditation room at the very top of a hill. It looks out over the tree tops. I've always liked doing yoga there, because if you start early in the morning you are doing actual sun salutations and the room slowly lightens up as the sun rises. It was a great class and an even more wonderful breakfast. After breakfast, Stevo was teaching his session, so Wessy and I were on our own for entertainment.

We decided to go for a walk around the Quaker Center. Another good thing about the Quaker Center is that it is interlaced with hiking trails among the redwoods. Wessy's enthusiasm for hiking waxed and waned, but his excitement about sticks, leaves, mushrooms and dirt was constant:

That afternoon, after trying and failing to get Wessy to nap, Stevo took him to meet one of the caretakers of the Quaker Center. As it turned out, they were pruning fruit trees in the orchard that afternoon. Wessy appointed himself as a helper, and dutifully spent almost a half hour dragging tree branches from the orchard down to the road to be loaded into a pick up truck. He kept nipping at the workers' heels and asking to help again and again. He was disappointed when there were no more tree branches. Would that he maintains this enthusiasm for yard work as he gets older!

That night, it was again a struggle for us all to sleep in the same room. Well, I should say it was a struggle for some, and for others, it was the funnest slumber party EVER.

Today we again did yoga class and had a fabulous breakfast. Then it was time to head home, but not before hitting up Davenport State Beach. It was a gorgeous, cloudless day and there was hardly anyone there. Wessy went crazy running and playing on the immense stretch of white sand. First he found a horsie and hitched a ride:

Then the CAMIONES came back out:

Somewhere along the way, he lost his pants. Apparently no big deal and not something to slow down for anyway.

He played a long stretch and had an amazing time. Even after we had been there for two hours and he was flagging a bit, he begged us to stay longer. After much tribulation, we made our way along the abandoned railroad tracks and back to the car. Wessy lasted a few minutes more until falling into an exhausted sleep, ruddy-cheeked, his little knees skinned, still not wearing pants and happy as a clam.

Wesley's budding bilingualism is not without its malaprops. Most often, he back-translates things he is saying in English from the more familiar Spanish. Given that the word for in and on (en) and the word for at and to (a) are the same in Spanish, prepositions are particularly tricky. As Spanish uses a lot of articles where we don't in English, he is also prone to putting an extra "the" in front of many things. Some examples:

-"I want to go at the home."

-"It fell in the floor."

-"I'm touching the nose."

All of this is said in a slight Mexican accent. He will put an "e" sound before all words starting with "s" much like many native Spanish speakers. Thus, the snowcats we saw at Tahoe became "Esnowcats."