Well, 7 days after I put my boy on a plane, I finally got a call from Kyle this morning. At least he claimed to be Kyle. I still have my doubts.

::ring ring::

me: “hello?”

guy on phone: “hello?”

me: “hello?”

guy on phone: “hello?”

Repeat this exchange at least 3 more times.

me – exasperated: “Who is this?!”

guy on phone: “Kyle! Your son!”

me: “…”

Yeah, I asked him for proof. I should have asked him if he had made any wishes on a Zoltar machine while in Venice.

………

*

Kyle left yesterday for his annual summer trip to Malibu and he’ll be gone for almost 2 weeks.

Strange. I have not done one happy dance since leaving the airport. In fact, I’ve been kind of in a funk since then. What is up with that?! Usually I don’t start missing him until after the 1st week.

Maybe it’s because Kyle no longer travels as an unaccompanied minor. I had moments of panic as I was driving away because there is no airline personal supervision anymore. When the plane lands he is free to walk off whether his aunt is there to pick him up or not. Not pleasant to think about.

Maybe it’s not Kyle’s absence at all, but the problems I’m having migrating a client’s blog from Movable Type to Typepad. It is just not working. And both platforms are run by the same people! How f’ed up is that? gah. So completely frustrating.

Maybe it’s a lack of paint fumes in my life. I think tomorrow I need to paint while Erin is at Jens. Turpentine fixes everything!

Today is Kyle’s last day of school.  Which means by next Monday afternoon I’ll be hearing the sweet refrains of “I’m bored” at least twice an hour each and every day for the next 10 1/2 weeks. oh the joy.

And to make sure we are all having fun, I get to send him back to the school twice a week for an hour of math tutoring! Hey, that’s what you get when you get a ‘D’ in math dude.

On the bright side he has basketball practice every Tues and Thurs evening throughout the summer. So for at least for 4 hours a week he won’t be sitting on his butt in front of a giant screen. I wish I could say the same for me.

Wow. I am really sucking at this whole blogging thing.  My baby boy turned 13!  on Feb. 1st without nary a mention. I mean really, I am a mother of a teenager now! That is some wicked bad lack of blog motivation. So, let’s catch up with young master Kyle shall we?

1. Yes, Kyle is officially a smelly teenager. But he’s had that crap teenage attitude for ages now – he’s gifted ya know?
2. For his birthday I set him up with a Facebook account. Now I can embarrass him in front of his friends from the comforts of my own chair.
3. Kyle and I did light painting photos on the beach one night and then made solar prints in Santa Cruz last month. Very fun.
4. Kyle starting having behavior problems again at school. Detentions have been bumped up to Referrals.
5. Baby got his first suspension. So. not. cool.
6. Behavior has now improved but his grades are in the toilet.
7. Kyle made the 7th grade Boys Volleyball team.
8. Of course he’s benched until he gets those grades up.
9. I was invited to participate in the Bent Twig Art Show at Vox this month and chose Kyle as my “twig” (an established artist is joined by an upcoming/new artist).
10. Kyle made 2 mixed media tiles for the show, while I showed 3 Holga diptychs.
11. Kyle sold one of his tiles!!!  my baby had his first gallery sale at 13 – that rawks!
12. Even at the ripe old age of 13, Kyle stills screams like a girl.
13. I love the boy.

Last weekend I took a class on making photo transfers. very cool stuff. So of course I ran out and bought myself some gel medium, printed some photos, and spread out on the dining room table. Now when I’ve got my art supplies out, Chris will tell Erin not to touch Mommy’s stuff, to leave things alone, “Mommy’s crafting”. Well, every time I hear that – “Mommy’s crafting”, part of my brain wants to object – crafting? I’m not “crafting”, I’m making ART damn it! But the glue fumes leave me a bit apathetic and meh, whatever…

So, for this month’s Vox show (more an that later), Kyle was making a couple mixed media tiles while I worked on some transfers. Suddenly everyone was crafting and Erin was not going to be left out! She wanted to craft too! Believe me, everything with that girl is followed by an exclamation point. And because I’m not always the sharpest tool (I blame all that crafty glue sniffin’), I bought Erin a Crayola Color Wonders paint/marker/Sleeping Beauty set.

Now Erin is “crafting” too. And pretty damn obsessed with those paints. Time for bed? God speed. You’ll have to pry that paint brush from her G.I.Joe kung-fu grip. And lets hope you didn’t value your hearing much, cause you’re ears are now bleeding. That can’t be good. And her first words upon waking in the morning? “I craft?!”  “You help me craft?!” “I’m not hungry! I craft now!!”

So, yeah… she crafts. I’m wicked scared.

or – Why I’m demanding a DNA test.

Ah yes, I was going to tell you my theory on why I believe Erin was switched with another baby at the hospital. But the proof is in the pudding and a picture is worth a thousand words. Behold:

She did NOT get that from me! She was all “I cooking” for hours Christmas morning with the sound of those “dancing shoes” clicking on the tiles. I swear I broke out in a rash just watching her!

But maybe these things skip a generation. Because later Christmas evening there was this:

Oh yeah, that’s my girl.

Every year I include one of Kyle’s school pictures with the Christmas cards I send to distant friends and relatives. Of course, I’ve also had to print pics of Erin the last 2 years. As I started filling out the cards this year, I started looking through my one million and two photographs for a picture of Erin and Kyle. Turns out I have no recent photos of the two of them together. In fact, I don’t even have a good shot of Erin that I want to print. So last night I pulled out my camera in the hopes of getting a nice photo of Erin in front of the Christmas tree. It didn’t happen and I don’t want to talk about it.

This morning, while Erin was eating her breakfast, I noticed my camera on the table. Buoyed by a good night’s sleep and a fresh cup of coffee, I tried again. Hey, remember this baby? You could just tell she was gonna be trouble. Well, this morning I think she start throwing gang signs at me!

and when I continued to shoot pictures she started mad-doggin’ me something fierce!

I’m wicked scared…

Now that the site I’ve been working on night and day is for the most part finished, I actually have some time to catch up on my photo editing. I’ve barely made a dent into the pictures I took over the summer, so I’m now working backwards. Yes, it does feel wrong. I starting going through the shots taken on our last visit to Santa Cruz over Labor Day weekend and found some photos of Erin that had me shaking my head.

My dad has said on more than one occasion that I was spoiled rotten. That might have been true when I was little, but I’m pretty sure that tap was shut off when I hit double digits. And I am always quick to point out that you can’t spoil yourself and he needs to turn that finger around and point it at the spoiler not the spoiled. Anyways, it seems it is time for the next generation to take the lead. Erin is my in-law’s (the ubers) only grandchild. And Chris certainly made them wait for her. So as you can image, they like her, a lot, and have years of pent-up grandparent spoiling to work through. (And please note that they are also great to Kyle, but he was 7 when Chris and I got together. They still manage to spoil him too, but a baby – that’s the stuff grandparents live for.)

When Kyle started school in August, Erin became obsessed with having a backpack like her big brother. Kyle gave her his old backpack, but it was way too big on her and made her look like a turtle. We mentioned that we needed to get Erin a toddler-sized backpack to grandma and off to Toys’R'Us we went. Erin not only got a backpack – she got TWO! Matching Barbie backpacks to make it even more wonderful.

Yeah, that baby knows how to work it.

And this is how she left Santa Cruz. Lions and tigers and tiaras oh my…

Vox Sacramento’s Children’s Art Show opened last Saturday night and I managed to get a few pics of Kyle and his photographs up on Flickr. I like this one -

I think it really captures his enthusiasm for the whole affair.

In other Kyle news – he made the school basketball team!  Practices 6 days a week starting…  now.