Embarking On Teenhood

My gorgeous girl, Maya, turned thirteen over the weekend. We have officially entered teenhood, everybody, and I ain't scared. No sir!

My girl is a joy, a model kid. She is fun and strong and smart and responsible and compassionate. She's the most social person I know who can genuinely make people feel at ease and accepted. She is a beam of light; nearly all love.

She is growing into a stunning young woman and I largely ignore grown folks that tell me "oooo, you're in trouble" or "better get yourself a shot gun." Maya's looks are the last thing she relies on; they are the smallest of all her amazing attributes. "She'll be just fine," I tell those folks. "Just fine."

On her birthday Maya requested a few things for me to cook, from breakfast to dinner, and then asked if we could go ice skating during the day. We're not the best of skaters, but it was fun to stomp around on the ice, in from the 70 degree Cali weather. Here are some pic's of the day.

We started the day with a tofu scramble made with fakin bacon and tomatoes. I always forget to take photos of the savory stuff, but here's a picture of the easily-made vegan homemade biscuits with homemade blueberry/strawberry jam infused with lavender from our garden. Molly had brought me the blueberries from a local farm she had visited recently. Forget it. If I never make anything else but jams I'd be happy. Here we are ice skating, or giving it a shot anyway.

What? I'm practically Dorothy Hamill here. Jazz hands don't fail me now. Also, keeping your mouth open like that is an ancient secret to balance. Mami never hits the ice, yo!
We spent most of our ice skating time sitting on the wood benches taking photos like these:


Then I spent a good amount of time taking photos like this:


After skating, I made rice and beans because we cannot have any holiday/celebration/every couple weeks without some beans, and because Maya had asked, "You're making beans, right?" I made enough for the neighbors who stopped by with birthday wishes. Here's my girl's cake, She had requested a chocolate/peanut butter flavor combo and left the rest up to me. It's a vegan chocolate cake with vegan peanut butter butter cream. I've baked a lot of stuff, but this might be the most ridiculous. Punch-in-the-gut good. Worth-the-sugar-blues good. Most importantly, Maya loved it.


Papi and Mina enjoy cake.

Mina enjoying more cake wearing brilliant paper-cup cuffs. Her shirt has Wonder Woman on it, and by the afternoon she had fashioned these cuffs for herself.

Maya dreaming big, I imagine.

Happy birthday, Maya baby, and thank you for being such a great person. I love you so much.