^ Rules in this house: 1. No axes. 2. No killing people.

^ Slightly modified grocery list. (Teno’s toys.)

^ Birthday wish list.

^ He claims this is a smiley face. (Turn your head sideways.)

Self-portrait, hanging outside Teno's classroom. Note the propeller hat and slingshot.

Last year I posted a short, non-fiction story I wrote called Steve’s Going to College. It was my contribution to a book of non-fiction short stories – and the only one about a mom who’s pretty sure she’s going to mess up her kid. In the story I ponder the fact that this kid is going to grow up and be a man someday, and that the kind of man he turns out to be depends heavily on how Tony and I react to his constant attempts to drive us insane.

Well, he isn’t quite in college yet, but Teno has started kindergarten, and I thought that was cause enough for another post. I think I’ll conduct an interview with Teno sometime when it’s not so far past his bedtime, so he can tell you what he thinks of it himself.

From the little bit Tony and I can get out of him, Teno likes P.E., and hates music class. He loves numbers and art, and hates waking up early. He has a friend named Niko that we hear about a lot, and is in love with at least two of the girls in his class. On Monday one of them took his face in both her hands and put her forehead on his forehead. The look of pure joy on his face was all I needed to come to grips with the fact that I’m going to spend the next 15 or so years trying to talk Teno out of falling in love with every girl who snuggles his face.

Teno reminds me so much of my little brother sometimes, and then other times Tony shakes his head at me and says, “Aaron never did this?” Like, when I see him in a crowd of little boys and I can tell how much he wants to play with them, but even at 5 he’s unsure of himself and just kind of plays near them. Kindergarten has definitely helped him get over some of the awkwardness (that I’m sure he gets from me, because Tony is at ease with everyone he meets.) I remember seeing my brother playing with some kids not too long after he started karate and marveling at how much he’d come out of his shell. It’s the same with Teno, every day he’s a little less sad to go to school, and a little more outgoing when we get to the playground.

The Wizard

Then of course there are the times when he’s lying in the bathtub squirting his wiener with a squirt gun and laughing. I absolutely promise you I never saw my brother do that.

My brother also never donned weird outfits at night and called himself The Wizard, which Teno has taken to doing as of late. I can pretty much count on being challenged to a fight by a five year old in a hamburger hat and furry vest right around 6:15pm every day.

His imagination is totally bonkers. This kid builds Angry Birds levels out of cardboard bricks. He makes warp tubes out of anything he can fit inside. One of his favorite things to do is to log onto YouTube and have me look up weird stuff. Tonight we looked up “screaming frog” and “crying animals.” A few days ago he only wanted to watch Japanese Kirby videos.

Lost in Chicago? Just call Teno. He not only knows almost all the stops on EVERY El line, but he can also tell you which stops to transfer to what trains at. All night he asks Tony and me “Which Pink Line stop is the best one? What’s your favorite Green Line stop?” No matter what we answer, we’re always wrong. On slow week ends I take him on long train adventures. A few weeks ago we took the Brown Line to the Red Line to the Yellow Line. We took that all the way to Skokie and back, then switched to the Purple and took it all the way to Linden. I was bored stiff but didn’t want to be one of those shithead parents that just iPhones the whole time they’re with their kid so I stared out the windows alongside Teno. He could not have had a better day.

This entire photo was Teno's idea.

So anyway, everything’s pretty radical in the world of Teno Destructo. He’s still getting over the fact that some of his classmates eat meat, and that some of them actually wanted vanilla cupcakes on their birthdays. He can’t decide what he wants more, a cat or a baby sister and he’s getting neither. He’s really god damn good at Bejeweled. Oh! And he was customer of the month at our favorite pizza place, Ian’s Pizza. Somebody actually recognized him on the street for that, he was pretty stoked.

I’ll try to interview him this week end, but he’s kind of a butthole so I’m not making any promises.

All I remember is being petrified that Tony and I made the biggest mistake of our lives. Not that Teno was a mistake, per say, just that we were signing up for something we really had no clue about. As the big day got closer and closer I started listening to Foo Fighters “Miracle” a lot. Again, not because Teno was a miracle, per say – in fact, he came along pretty darn easy. But rather, it was quite miraculous the way this unborn kid was changing me, changing my relationship with Tony, and changing the way I saw the world.

So as I sit here on the very last night during which my kid is four, I’m listening to this song again. It’s bittersweet, as the thing that stands out to me most in these past five years is the fact that I recently lost my dad and that he won’t be at Teno’s party this year. (In fact, we aren’t having one, because I can’t handle it.) But just like my mom made sure I knew so much about my great-grandpa Teno, despite him having passed before I was ever born, that I wanted to name my child after him, I will make sure Teno knows about his Papa and what a sweet, wonderful man he was.

Anyway, dad wouldn’t want me to cry about him on Teno’s birthday. He’d want to watch Teno open presents and make fun of my hippy food. So here’s that old song again…

Crazy but I’m relieved this time
Begging for sweet relief of blessing in disguise
Dying behind these tired eyes
I’ve been losin’ sleep, please come to me tonight

Hands on a miracle, I got my hands on a miracle
Leave it or not, hands on a miracle
And there ain’t no way, let you take it away

Everything that we survived
It’s gonna be alright, just lucky we’re alive
Got no vision I’ve been blind
Searchin’ everywhere, you’re right here in my sights

Hands on a miracle, I got my hands on a miracle
Leave it or not, hands on a miracle
And there ain’t no way, let you take it away

Hands on a miracle, I got my hands on a miracle
Leave it or not, hands on a miracle
I got my hands on a miracle
And there ain’t no way, let you take it away

Take it away, take it away

He's fed up.

When we had Teno, Tony and I were the first of our friends to have a kid. This spared us a lot of the advice that our other poor friends who are now starting their families undoubtedly receive non-stop. Decisions like should we immunize (we did), should we raise him vegan (we aren’t) and how long should we breastfeed (I gave up, that shit’s hard) were totally and utterly ours. All things considered I think we did a pretty good job and we have a righteous little kid to show for it.

We did, however, get advice from every nosey old lady on the planet, including homeless ones. One warm summer night we were taking a walk around the neighborhood, pushing Teno around in his stroller. We were letting him air out his chubby little feet and this homeless lady goes “You need to put some socks on that baby!”

Without missing a beat Tony snapped, “Oh weird, are you a homeless doctor?”

That shit happened ALL the time with us for the first two years. Some old lady in Target would spot us and say, “You shouldn’t let him have a pacifier, it’ll ruin his teeth.” and then one of us would have to say, “Are you a pediatrician or just a totally nosey old lady?”

“He can’t be a vegetarian, it’ll stunt his growth.”

“Oh my god, is THAT why there are so many midgets in India?”

I’m not suggesting you sass every old broad that gives you crap about your kids (you should) but I am suggesting that unless you’re driving around without a car seat, addicted to drugs, or you’ve named your child after a character from Twilight (on purpose… accidents do happen) then you’re probably doing just fine.

You can read more about my adventures in parenting in this interview my friend Jason just posted!

Teno: “Some bread has meat in it.”

Me: “Really?”

Teno: “Yeah, whole meat bread!”

Also:

“I can take care of myself! Bad care.”

“Them teachers is real bossy!” (After taking his placement tests for kindergarten… ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!)

“Your heart tells your butt to make poop and your bones tell your wiener to make pee.”

“I’m going to open a wiener store so’s girls can buy wieners.”

“Hey mom. When we get in the car you wanna beatbox with me?”

“Woah, mom! Your butt’s HUGE! I bet you poop huge poops!”

“Hey, I have a ‘dea. Let’s make a delicious recipe!”

And many, many more.

PS You can see Teno beatboxing here.

I’ve been a vegetarian for just over 10 years, Tony has been one for closer to 20. I spent a few years as a vegan, and I still bake without dairy more often than not. (Tony was also a vegan in the mid-90s during the same Krishna core craze that convinced me to go vegetarian, but he snuck Hostess fruit pies when no one was looking.)

I’ve gone through all the stages – the first stage, where I wasn’t sure I could live without bacon; the next stage where I was so disgusted with what I’d been eating all my life I couldn’t think about anything else; the stage in college where I decided vegetarian wasn’t enough and went vegan; the next stage, years later, where I found myself in a tour van in Toledo, OH, starving because not even the hamburger buns at the only diner open at 4am were vegan and I was too young and stupid to have thought about packing food. I dated an omnivore who went out of his way to only take me places to eat that had no vegan options. I ate grapefruit for dinner. Finally, I gave in and had pancakes, with no butter. For one an entire year I was terrified to eat cheese or to put sour cream on my torta. Then once day I accidentally had some and my ass didn’t explode I officially became a lacto-ovo once again.

Anyway, this isn’t about me. This is about my kid, Teno, who is a vegetarian. When I was pregnant a lot of people asked me if I’d raise Teno as a veggie. Seemed like a weird question. Would you ask a Catholic person if they were raising their kid Catholic? Or a black person if they were raising their child black? (OK that poor analogy offended people. Let’s try this one:) Or a German person if they were raising their child German? Not eating meat is as much a part of my and Tony’s lives as religion or race or creed. You are what you eat, right? (For the record, if you’re baptized into the Catholic church, you are forever a Catholic unless you are excommunicated. Believe me, I’ve been trying to find legal ways to get myself excommunicated for years.)

Most of my friends are vegetarians and vegans, so they knew what was up – but the occasional old lady would ask, and then politely inquire as to whether or not I was worried a meatless existence would stunt Teno’s growth. “Perhaps you’ve seen my grizzly bear of a husband?” I’d ask. Or sometimes, “funny, no one asks a 300 gorilla where he gets his protein!” But being a soon-to-be mom, I had to ask my doctor if it would be OK. His answer, of course, was that there couldn’t be a healthier diet for a growing child than one rich in fruits and veggies. Meat consumption is completely unnecessary for normal growth, he said. Just don’t load him up with soy as it can be hard to digest and he’ll be as big and bouncy as any other baby boy.

For the first three or so years of his life, Teno had no idea he was a vegetarian. We’d take him to the zoo (I know, zoos suck… but as a city kid it’s his only chance to see any animals besides rats) and show him every animal show we could find on TV. Finally, one day, we were watching Food Network and Alton Brown was demonstrating how to cut a chicken in half with kitchen scissors. “What’s hims doing?” Teno asked me. “He’s cutting up a chicken,” I said.

“That’s not a chicken! A chicken is a buuuuurd!” Teno laughed at me for being so stupid. I looked at Tony and Tony looked at me. “Hey babe,” I explained, “That’s what a chicken looks like with no feathers and no head. Because some people eat chickens.”

Teno laughed at the idea, but I convinced him it was true. “Some people eat pigs, and cows, and other animals, too.” He wanted to know some of the details, so I explained that the animals have to be killed in order to be eaten. That they die, and they can’t run or play or see their moms anymore when they’re dead.

His eyes welled up with tears, “But I don’t want to eat hims! I love animals!”

“I know, babe. Mama and dad love animals too. That’s why we don’t eat them. And you don’t eat them, either. You never, ever have and if you don’t want to, you never ever have to.”

For a few weeks Teno was very curious about other things people eat. Do they eat dogs? Sometimes. Do they eat frogs? Yes. Do they eat other people? Well… not usually. Would they eat my shoe? Maybe, but probably not.

Then Teno started tattling on people who do eat meat. Grandma likes to eat meat. She likes to eat haaaaaaaam and that’s a pig! Leslie eats meat to. She said so.

I know, babe. Some people eat meat.

Then once day we were in a restaurant and Teno caught a glimpse of someone’s sandwich coming out from the kitchen. He identified the offending pile of meat on top, pointed at the woman who’d ordered it and yelled, “That lady’s eating MEAT! She wants the animals to DIE!!!”

“OK, Karl Buechner,” Tony said, “Sit down and drink your juice.”

Now people ask me what I’ll do if Teno wants to eat meat when he gets older. I’m reminded of my mom’s line, “This isn’t a restaurant. You’ll eat what I make.” Will I make him meat? No way. First of all, it’s my house. Second, I don’t know how to cook meat. I’m 30 years old and I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 19. Before then I lived on pancakes and tacos.

Will I stop him from eating meat when he’s not at home? How can I? I can hope that I’ve exposed him to so many delicious vegetarian options, and been honest enough with him about the way animals raised for food are treated that he’ll never want any part of it. But that’s all I can do.

Until then, little Karl and I will keep having our frank discussions, keep eating veggie dogs, and keep having family mosh time whenever New Ethic plays.

It’s a great book, full of true stories from people you probably don’t know, but that you’ll still want to read about. Anyway, this is my story – Steve’s Going to College:
—

It’s Friday night and I’m in bed with two dudes again. Tony is snoring already, and Teno seems content to stay awake a while longer, sticking his fingers up my nose and giggling. Every few minutes he insists that there’s a monster and we hide under the blankets until we’re safe again. It’s only 8pm but I’m getting tired. The fact that I’ve had both pillows hijacked and someone’s kicking me in the back motivates me to get out of bed.

Once they’re both knocked out it’s tempting to go sleep in the little one’s Thomas the Train bed. I know we’ll be up at 6am watching Tom and Jerry and eating Cocoa Pebbles in bed even though it sends Tony into a dust-busting frenzy. But he’s out of bed now, saying he wants to make out before the little ruiner realizes we’re not in the room with him. I remind him of my rule – no talking about Teno for at least 30 minutes afterwards. It makes me feel gross. And the kind of thing your parents did but that you always told yourself they never did goes down in a kind of disturbingly close vicinity to a plastic, train-shaped bed.

Steve’s going to collage. I know, because he’s wearing the Spitfire hat he always puts on when he goes to college. He’s looking mighty preppy in his khaki pants and long-sleeved, green-striped polo, I’m not sure his hat or his black Old Skool Vans really complete the look, but I had a hard enough time getting him to let me comb his hair today so I’m not asking any questions.

“College” is a cat-clawed green couch that my landlords left behind when they moved to Florida. And Steve is my three-year-old son, Teno. Most of the time, thankfully, he’s just Teno – a poorly behaved little kid who will only eat food off of toothpicks and who will only sleep in jeans, never pajamas. Once in a while he’s Spider-Man, wearing his skateboard helmet and jumping off our Ikea furniture. But today he’s Steve, the doofusy guy from Blue’s Clues, and he’s off to college just like real Steve was on his finale episode before the even more doofusy Joe took over. As much as I hate the Steve outfit, I am glad he’s never Joe. I don’t know where I would ever find him a purple sweater with purple squares on it.

Every time Steve goes to college it reminds me that Steve will probably really go to college. He’ll be a grown up and do what I’m doing right now, only instead of messing around with his iPhone he’ll be messing around with a way better iPhone. Or maybe our cell phone towers will have succeeded in killing off most of the bee population by then, leaving plants unfertilized and sending us into a global famine. Cell phones will have been banned and Steve will be reading a digital magazine while his kid gets Play-Doh all over the carpet, if kids still play with Play-Doh then.

But the bees will make a comeback, mostly thanks to Steve’s amazing work in insect biology. Which is good news, because on top of being a world-reknown bee scientist, Steve is also an award-winning pastry chef and his nougat was suffering from lack of honey.

Tony and I have no idea what we’re doing. I think most parents feel that way, but most of the parents we hang out with wanted to be parents in the first place. It’s not really a fair comparison. It’s like, yeah, a shark and a tiger can both swim. But the shark was built for the water. The tiger only swims when she’s forced into the water by danger or hunger or the fear that she might be too old to swim if she tries to swim after she turns 30 and gets her shit together a little bit. Or something like that. We used to do our laundry in Boystown because there were no children there. We were tigers.

We hadn’t even been together for a year when I became pregnant with Teno. Of course Tony told me he loved me the night we first kissed, so we had a tendency to move quickly. Laundromats still make me emotional, and I’m glad we don’t go to one anymore. The day I saw the little plus sign on the pregnancy test I waited to tell him until we got home from the Spin Cycle on Halsted because I knew if I told him earlier we’d never get our laundry done and I really needed socks.

We spent about a week thinking about what to do. On the one hand, we had a lot of plans together that would basically be put on an 18-year hiatus if we decided to keep the baby. On the other hand, our kid would be the most crucial kid ever – he’d be born with X’s on his hands. We decided the world was ready for one person who possessed the combined forces of our bad tempers and juivinile senses of humor and I proceeded to grow a Teno in my belly.

Tony had diarrhea for 9 months straight and I got so fat I couldn’t get up by myself once I sat down. I was in maternity pants about 6 weeks in and by the time Teno was born I was just under 200 lbs. I was pissed. Everything hurt, I hated my clothes and I was tired all the time. I figured it had to get better. So maybe I hated being pregnant, but once Teno was born I’d see his face and I’d get mom feelings and mom instincts and Tony would get awesome dad strength and he’d know how to fix everything in the house.

But it didn’t happen. When we took him home we weren’t happy – neither of us. I don’t think Teno particularly cared for us either. We were all tired and hungry and ill-prepared for this living arrangement. None of us slept more than an hour and a half at a time for over one year. I’ve never done drugs, so I don’t know which one I felt like I was on, but I felt like I was on something gnarly. I pushed all my friends away, argued with them about stupid stuff, told Tony he was a bad husband… I even tried to fight some girl at a Sweet Cobra show who was three times the size of me. My brain went crazy.

I always try to remember when things changed. I wish I could put my finger on it because now that more of my friends are having kids I see them going through the same stuff. Trying to argue with me about stupid shit, driving their families away, being mean to their husbands. I wish I could tell them that once their baby smiles at them the whole world is going to make sense again but I remember that day and as cute as it was, I was still tired and I was still angry.

Being back in school and doing really well at it is my first really clear memory of not feeling sorry for myself anymore. It was also the first time I was able to admit that maybe I was such a dick all the time because I had accomplished basically nothing in 26 years. I still had to wait until Teno was in bed to do my homework, and there were plenty of times when I threatened to quit because I didn’t want to be a writer, I just wanted to watch Cheaters and sleep in. Maybe we could just get a Link card and move to a shittier neighborhood.

But I was too far in student loan debt to quit, and by the time I walked across the stage to collect my diploma I didn’t doubt myself anymore. Ok, so maybe I was almost 30 when I graduated from college – but I did it with a toddler, a part-time job and in the middle of the biggest personal revelation I’ve ever experienced. Looking into the audience and seeing my husband eating nachos, my dad messing around on his phone and my mom knitting socks – I knew it was all worth it.

Three years in and we’re finally figuring this family thing out.

The older he gets, the more Teno makes sense to me. I didn’t understand never sleeping or hating car rides, but I understand monsters in the closet and making blanket forts. He won’t remember the parts where Tony and I Googled things like “why babies cry” and “6 months old never stops pooping” and he doesn’t know how afraid I was that I was completely screwing him up because I didn’t know how to be a mom. I’ll probably tell him someday, probably when he tells me I did something to screw him up.

I’m still not really sure what I’m doing. But I have a plan.

After witnessing Teno tearing past them both screaming “I gotta poop! I gotta poop!” Tony heard Teno say “It’s gonna be a big one!” and then one of the installation guys laughing.

And that’s the story of the time Teno took a crap with the door open right next to two complete strangers.

The past year has been way too huge to go through blow-by-blow. But there are some things worth mentioning:

Teno carved his first pumpkin and thought it was “gwoss.” He also drew a face on another pumpkin and named it “Jack Off.” Tony and I were thrilled. He was old school batman for Halloween, proclaiming the slick new black Batman “stupid.”

In November Teno resumed his position as the only person who can make Tony and I smile in times of complete and utter sadness. We lost our friend Mat to a long battle with cancer and spent our winter holidays hiding in bathrooms and crying. Teno’s funny face gave us what we needed to make it through the end of 2009.

Early in 2010 we took Teno to Disney World. Of course the flight resulted in an ear infection and he was too sick to really enjoy it. Poor kid.

We got back to Chicago just in time to move – again – and to celebrate Teno’s 4th birthday in our new place. He had a Super Mario party, as that was (and remains) his obsession. My parents got him a DS and it’s definitely kept us from killing him on several road trips since.

Shortly after that we found out we had to move again. Yes, had to. One thing I really got sick of this year was people making fun of us for moving so much. Guess who likes to move over and over again with a four-year-old? No one. We HAD to move. So shut up.

We were barely settled into our new place (where we thankfully still live) when I was invited to judge a pie bake off in Madison. This kid was a champ all the way there and we ended up having the most fun week end ever. Who knew Teno, the biggest creature of habit on the planet would LOVE hotels? One awesome moment: A guy on the street told Teno he liked his Seibei “Make me a sandwich” shirt. Teno responded, “I live in a hotel!”

Oh, we also discovered Teno’s favorite food on that trip: macaroni and cheese pizza from Ian’s. Luckily there’s another Ian’s right by us in Wrigleyville so it’s become a staple.

We spent most of the summer scrambling to get Teno into pre-school. Having moved so many times in one year we didn’t realize we were no longer in the school district where he was originally registered. After a lot of absolutely no help at all from Chicago Public School employees, we got stuck on a waiting list for pre-school. We’re still on it. It’s October. I’m pretty sure Teno isn’t going to pre-school.

While I am slightly terrified about what’s going to happen when the kid who coined the phrase “shit-shocker” goes to kindergarten full-time, with absolutely no school experience under his belt, I admit I’m happy he’s my little baby for another year yet.

So that’s kind of the season-by-season. Some general themes this past year have been:

Teno’s militant vegetarianism. He gives me daily reports on who eats meat and who doesn’t, scrunching up his nose when he rattles off the names of offenders. He also occasionally gets all PETA on people in restaurants yelling, “That lady eats meat! She wants the animals to DIIIIIEEEE!” My vegan friends are all very proud of him, but I’ll still waiting for the day he turns into Ted Nugent and out efforts to make him a compassionate eater blow up in our faces.

Super Mario Bros. Like I said, he’s obsessed. For a hot minute he was Mario, wearing a propeller helmet (or, as he calls it “flying apple hat”) absolutely everywhere. But these days he’s Luigi most of the time… which is cool. I respect a kid who roots for the lesser-known hero. He’s going to be Yoshi for Halloween.

Oh, and he is also REALLY good at Nintendo and X-box. I know people are really hot on kids getting out and running around and not just playing video games, but I think he has a pretty fair balance of both. His grandma brings him to the park for three hours at a time. More than I can handle. Me? I was an inside kid. I preferred reading and video games to running round outside – and when I was outside, I was building some sort of shanty and pretending to live in it. And I turned out fine. White people love to make you feel bad about not being outside.

Cussing. I know I wrote about this before, but oh man does this kid cuss now. I swear we don’t encourage it. In fact, I’ve turned into the official soap-in-the-mouth-threatener around here. (I would never actually do that to Teno. And anyway, I buy Lush so the soap would taste delicious.) We catch him dropping f-bombs at video games ALL the time. When we tell him he’s naughty he just goes “sorry boss.” He’s also found ways to swear without actually swearing. I caught him yelling “Ugggghhhh! You stupid FOXer!” at Super Mario Bros 3. Foxer is not a bad word. What am I supposed to do?

He also invented, as I mentioned, “shit-shocker,” which is the greatest insult of all time. But since he’s not allowed to say it, he now says “crap-shocker.” But my friends have been thoroughly enjoying shit-shocker.

Life is awesome now that Teno doesn’t need to be carried, is potty trained and sleeps through the night. I know people get babymania, but I think four is my absolute favorite age so far. I can still impress him with an episode of The Muppet Show he hasn’t seen yet and the promise of a bag of MnMs can get him to do almost anything. He can’t wait to trick-or-treat, or for Santa to come and all he wants in the world is for it to be Saturday so he can stay up late and watch movies with me and Tony. It’s the best.

I’m going to try and do a better job of making quick updates here. We’ll see how that goes. Sorry boss.

There were thrills & spills!

Death-defying acts of courage!

Check out Teno on his first roller coaster.

Free Mt. Dew!

Cannibal hot dogs!

Underage drivers!

Man-eating cotton candies!

It will leave you comatose.