Parenting

What was the thing with sports, again?

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swimmers
Go that way. Fast. Stay afloat.

There have been times when the worry that I have screwed up one of my kids keeps me up at night.

Then one of them will say or do something to make me realize (a) any mom guilt I carry around is probably unwarranted, because (b) everyone I’ve raised likely stopped paying attention to me by about kindergarten anyway.

Take the thing with sports. Since the kids were enough to walk, we’ve had them in one sport or another, season after season. It’s not that either of us is particularly athletic. And if we ever wondered whether anybody around here harbored some latent talent that would one day fund college, that ceased to be a question the minute somebody lobbed a ball into his own team’s net, or became so engrossed in conversation he forgot he was in the game.

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Parenting

Somebody’s about to get punched in the head

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Guille2Over the course of the past four or five years or so, we’ve had regular stints as exchange student host-parents. It’s different from being a regular parent. There’s not as much yelling.

I’m finding, however, that my sense of motherly righteous indignation can get just as revved up on behalf of someone else’s kid as it can for my own.

At issue is the relationship between our exchange student, Guillermo, and his golf coach.

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Parenting

How skiing leads to therapy and why I owe my mom an apology

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Mountain Tantrum, 2006

Today was the first family ski trip of the season. This activity is gobs easier than it used to be. These days I say: “we’re going skiing this weekend,” and everyone says “hooray.”

But as any parent knows, take an activity you used to happily schedule vacations around, spend absurd amounts of money on, and risk life and limb to do, add really small children, and you get stuff around which future therapy sessions will revolve.

When the boys were younger, I’d spend the afternoon prior to ski day gathering hats, coats, gloves, socks, long-johns, helmets and ski pants from wherever they’d been scattered the last time a big storm dumped enough snow on the driveway for sledding.

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Fitness, Parenting

The weight of water

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taking in a few laps after their Journey Through Hell (aka Swim Meet)
C-man & his buddy taking in laps after their Journey Through Hell (aka The Swim Meet)

This weekend’s swim meet induced a weighty case of sports anxiety in my eleven year-old.

I know. Swimming? Sports anxiety? What’s going on, Richie Incognito in the locker room?

Both boys have participated in rec league swim team for the last six summers – on advice from their swim instructor when I complained after multiple lessons that they still acted like it was their first time blowing bubbles under water.

Swim team ended the dog paddling. They went from barely staying afloat, to swimming half a dozen laps in the time I’d be mustering courage to exit the locker room in a swimsuit.

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