Yesterday was Kid Two’s eleventh birthday, and we began celebrating at dinner the night before with a few of his favorite cheeses: Humbolt Fog (tangy, almost powdery, made of goat’s milk), Mt. Tam (rich, creamy, cow’s milk), and a firm extra-sharp golden cheddar.

A Cheesy Supper

He discovered cheese while grocery shopping with me over the years. Our local market has an extensive cheese selection, and the only way, really, to sell unfamiliar cheese is to give people a taste. So he’s grown up wandering past trays piles high with tiny toothpicked cubes of parrano and cave-aged gruyere (not a favorite), old Amsterdam, (best grated over popcorn!), maasdammer, and fontina, to name a few – an alphabet soup of goat cheese, sheep cheese, cow cheese, hard cheese, herb cheese, stinky cheese – he’s nonchalantly sampled them all, and passed judgement on each. He’s not a big fan of cake, so on special occasions we splurge and let him eat cheese.

Picture two boys nibbling on grapes and baby carrots and spicy green olives and baby dill pickles and spreading their cheese of choice on thin slices of toasted sourdough baguette. Drinking sparkling cider made from apples grown near our home. Laughing and discussing their noms de plume for this blog:

K1: How about Gandolf and Frodo?

K2: No, I’d rather be Bilbo, he’s cooler.

K1: No, wait, we should be Darth Maul and Darth Sidious. That way we’d still maintain the master-apprentice relationship.

K2: R2D2’s cool.

K1: Yeah, but I don’t want to be C3PO. He’s weird.

In the end they decided to be Treble and Bass because, to quote Kid One, “we’re fundamentally the same but we start on different notes.”

It was really a lovely sentiment, and once again made me happy to be their mom. Until they decided their new names were acronyms for “Big Ass Sassy Son” and “Tiny Rebellious Evil Bloke who Loves Elephants.”

I think I’ll stick with Kid One and Kid Two for now.