The boy's award

Last night we attended the boy's Water Polo end of season banquet. I know I have that tunnel vision that a lot of parents get. Even when your child is in a team sport, your eyes stick on your own child. Last night, though, I was struck by the caliber of the kids in this program. The team captain, a senior, last night got up in front of the entire group of parents and kids and addressed them with such candor; unafraid to say that these are the most intimate friendships he's made in his life, that this team has brought him so much joy, that these guys have his admiration with how they evolved as a team and how they always watched out for each other... I was impressed. And those boys didn't tease or cajole or cat call. They nodded their heads, gave enthusiastic applause, and were candid themselves with their admiration for their captain and each other.

Enthusiasm is alive and well in high school. Who knew?

Because of our world stopping 2.5 inches of snow last week, the banquet had been rescheduled. Unfortunately that meant that the boy's JV coach was not in attendance last night. Drew already had a vacation planned. Instead he sent notes on each player. Here's what he had to say about our boy:

"Striker a.k.a. The Boss. He rarely missed a practice and never gave me any trouble. (He must save all the trouble for me. - MH) Too bad he won't get tall seeing how his dad is so short."

Striker also got the Most Improved Player award which is pretty awesome. It was voted on by the other boys on the team. Kristen, the head coach, said she completely agreed with the team's assessment with Striker's performance.

As we were chatting about the award and how great it was that he got it, he revealed, "I voted honestly, so I voted for myself." Hah!

Politician in the making.

BTW: another thing about our epic 2.5 inches of world stopping snow. Turns out that Bainbridge Bakers donated a cake for our event last night. Because our event was cancelled last week, Bainbridge Bakers made the cake TWICE! This was the most EPIC Chocolate Cake ever! It was HUGE and it defeated me and Hubby. We had to split our one piece. Amazing. Next time you're in Bainbridge Bakers, thank them for me, okay?

Anti-crap Christmas

This year I'm requesting something completely different for Christmas. My kid's aunts and uncles will always call asking what to get my kids. When they were much younger, it was very easy. They'd ask for crap:  Spiderman crap, Hot Wheels crap, Dora crap, Barbie crap, Groovy Doll crap, even *gasp* American Girl doll crap. That last one was pretty pricey crap. But this year, for my kids (at least the older ones) I'd like to get experiences.

The boy is asking for a zippo lighter, an ove glove, and an Airsoft gun. Those first two because he'd like to have them in his camping gear. His last ove glove was damaged. Instead, I'm asking him to consider a visit to the shooting range with his uncle, or maybe a camping trip, or maybe a class with the NRA to improve his marksmanship. Ooh, what about a paint ball scrimmage? See, these are great ideas!

My 9 year old princess needs to think about less crap. She's pretty disorganized. Typically things that she loves, she loves hard and then forgets them after a week. However, she's really into creating costumes for her dolls right now so I'm thinking maybe a set of sewing classes or maybe knitting classes. She also likes beading jewelry so maybe a class for that too. She's in Aikido and will be testing soon. She could use a bigger gi. She's also been on my case to bring her to the Girl Scout store to use up her cookie dough gift card she earned last year. On the other hand, I sure could use an agent to get her some modeling gigs. I don't even know how to start with that one. 

My 5 year old just wants crap. But here's what is fun! She loves reading. She's amazing at addition thanks to her big brother who has been quizzing her on math facts since she was probably 3. She also loves playing on the DS or will take off with my phone and change all the settings. Books are always a hit and generally not crap. Just f.y.i.:  I don't like Berenstein Bears, Dora, Clifford, & Diego books. Don't even get me started on Amelia Bedelia & Curious George books. I grit my teeth and get through them but I can't stand reading them. Knowing my brothers, that's the only kinds of books they'll get her. *sigh*. But we both LOVE Eric Carle books, simple chapter books, Arthur books, and fanciful picture books. 

May your days be merry and bright and may all your Christmases be less about crap and more about experiences. 

School lunches

A lot of the posts I have here are about my boy. Truth be told, he's turning into a man p.d.q. It is hard to refer to him as "the boy" when he towers over me at 5'11" and his voice is doing that Peter Brady "pork chops and apple sauce" thing. (Thank God for Nick @ Nite for the Brady Bunch reference still being relevant.) He's really turning into a responsible guy.

I haven't had to wrestle him to do his homework. Last year he brought home nearly straight A's. He managed to get all his requirements to earn his Scout 2nd Class. The biggest challenge with that was remembering to have his book with him at events and meetings. With Water Polo, he's been really responsible and only grouses slightly when he has to wake up before the sun to get into the pool for practice. After 2 short seasons in the pool, he's being groomed for the center forward position, earning his new moniker:  Striker. He's also been nominated to go to a training camp with the US Olympic team.

Wow, I get why parents brag about their kids' athletic & academic exploits. This is fun! What a rush!

But this morning we had a conversation about the kid he used to be and not the kid he is today. See, some logical consequences have long term pay offs.

My kids have been enjoying having soup for lunch. I will make a crock pot of soup before bedtime and pack it up in the morning for lunch in their thermoses. My boy has never been very good about remembering to bring his thermos back home after school. When he was in elementary school and intermediate school, he went through at least 4 thermoses. He still complains about the intermediate school's lunch policy of putting the classes' lunches in a basket to be delivered to the cafeteria. Then each child was to REMEMBER to get their lunches before they went home. He lost 2 thermoses that way.

When we went shopping for the thermoses, my daughter and he would select their favorite design. His would be understandably boyish or plain. My daughter would select pink & purple flowers and Barbies. After the years of lost thermoses, all we have left are the pink & purple flowers and Barbies. Striker, my mini-man has a grown man's apetite. One small thermos of soup will not carry him through the day. So, this morning I packed him his 2 thermos lunch in the pink & purple flowers and Barbie thermoses.

Yay for him being confident enough in himself to be okay with bringing his lunch to school in these ridiculous thermoses. Boo for his exasperation with me for even buying these girly thermoses in the first place. I reminded him about all the lost thermoses that he got to pick out. The black and silver one, the one with Hot Wheels on it, the plain green one, the blue one... all lost by a younger version of himself that couldn't remember to bring home his thermos.

Now before I get comments that I should get the boy a proper non-girly thermos, you should know that I'm already planning to do so. No worries, okay? In fact, we have been trying out a set I got from Costco and it looks like a winner. It is dark blue with not a flower or Barbie in sight.

The walls

There are a few events in one's lifetime that the place you got the news will always let you remember the place. What is it about memory that sears your physical location to the place that it happened? It must be an evolutionary thing. That you always remember the place some world changing event happened so that if you need to, you can avoid that place. Funny how the mind tries to insulate a tragic event by marking it in your brain as possibly avoidable. Maybe that spot is imbued with memories of hurt. Maybe that spot is forever changed by that event. Why else would your mind remember it so strongly? Is it possible that every time you touch that spot of earth, a little of that tragedy touches you again?

So I remember the radio alarm clock going off on 9/11/01. I remember hitting the snooze and my husband leaving the bed. I remember him coming into our room after a few minutes, telling me that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. We got out of bed and turned on the television. We sat on the couch and both watched as the second plane crashed into the towers. There was the grim realization that this was not an accident. We both called our loved ones in Hawaii and California to make sure they knew what was happening. I remember asking my husband to stay home, to avoid the ferry, to avoid the down town city scrapers. He went to work anyway. He wanted to stop watching the repeating loop of the planes crashing, the people jumping, the ash choking all those people on the streets. Then they stopped the ferries for a time and I thought he would be stranded in Seattle.

But I couldn't avoid the bed where I heard the news. I couldn't avoid the living room, a place where I had watched the second tower fall. We lived in it. We avoided the media, turning on radios and televisions sparingly -- just enough to know what was going on but not enough to steep in grief all day. Like most people, we sent money and went to church. The whole world was reordered around me.

I imagine that if grief were paint, 9/11 would have sprayed our bedroom and living room. When my father died a year later, the rest of the house received a second coat. Maybe three. On my mother's first visit back after Dad died, I remember she refused to close any of the doors in the house, choosing to shower with the door ajar and changing her clothes in the bedroom with the door wide open. I think the grief was so big for her that the doors couldn't shut, even if she tried.

So we moved out of that place about a year and a half later. This new house has a couple of coats of grief too. Someday we'll shed it as well.

If only it were so easy.

Not a soccer mom

The beginning of every school year of my childhood started with the predictable writing prompt: "What did you do this summer?" 

I can tell you what I didn't do. I didn't work on my blog at all. I didn't get to sleep in except during August. While you working people would find that whiny, I am and have always been a night owl. Parenthood doesn't allow you to be a night owl. I remember being disgusted that my parents would fall asleep in front of the TV at around 9 PM. I get it now. Staying up past midnight and then having to get up at 6 AM so your son will be at the pool by 7 AM leads to crankiness and sleepiness. 

My boy took up water polo this summer. He's loved the sport since he took a summer camp for it about 2 years ago. What sealed his enthusiasm was the last Olympics when both the US men's and women's water polo teams silver medaled. After years of signing up for the youth league and the youth classes which are routinely cancelled because of low enrollment, he's finally old enough to play with the big boys. They really are the big boys because this is the high school team. 

At my boy's first game, within the first few minutes of him being in the pool, he made an assist for a goal, the first of that game! It was so exciting. Less exciting were 2 failed passes later in the game when he inadvertently gave possession to the other team and in the second case, assisted them with a goal. There was a little bit of grousing from a parent sitting next to me. I sidled up to them and cheerily asked them which player was theirs. They told me that their boy was entering the 11th grade and had been playing for 3 years. He was probably the team's biggest and most able player. I then told them that my boy was just entering the 8th grade and this was exactly his 6th time in the pool since practice started. They didn't grouse after that and were very understanding of his errors considering what a novice my boy was. At 5'10, he doesn't really look like an 8th grader, and when you add the fact that all you really can see of him is his head and sometimes his arms when he's in the pool, he looks like a kid who is much older.  I really like the group of parents of the water polo team. I've been told by a couple of them that starting the athletes in their 8th grade year really makes the transition into high school so much easier. They already know a lot of the kids at the high school and the older kids tend to take their younger team mates under their wing. 

That was exactly what I reminded myself of every week of summer when I woke at the crack of dawn... Well, 6 AM. He had practice every day of the week either starting at 7 AM or 8 AM and lasting 2 hours. Then he had practice every evening at 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM. The fall schedule is not much better except that the early morning swimming practice is only 2 times a week, but the evening practices are 5 times a week. 

I only had a break from that schedule while he was off at summer camp for a week and also for the week that he was taking his NRA Hunter's safety course. He is surprisingly good at shooting targets. He's angling for us to get him a rifle or a kit for him to make his own. I have to admit it is too much testosterone for me to make a rational decision about. Maybe I should just let his dad deal with all of that. 

Thoughts of my boy getting a college water polo scholarship started swimming in front of my eyes. One of the coaches went to University of Hawaii after she played for our girls team at the high school level. I started hoping hoping hoping that my boy could follow in those footsteps. Then a quick google search later, I found out that they don't even have mens water polo at UH. How does that happen??? I consoled myself that Stanford, M.I.T., Harvard, and Princeton do. Still, him going to UH would have been nice so he'd be around family.

I'm adjusting to dealing with a sport that will require me to get on the ferry to go to games. This is something that a lot of parents do here on the island. I've always thought it was crazy to do, but when I think that the people on the US National team are playing well into their 30s, I realize that this is a sport that can guide my boy through his high school, college, and young adult years. I suppose that getting up early and dealing with the ferry will be easy enough for me to do. 

There will be no reprieve for me when the season is over though. Most of the boys are also on the swim team to improve their form and speed in the water. I've heard rumors that swim team practice starts at 5 am. 

Bummer. 

Six nurses

This particular story might be mildly embarrassing to my cousin Grace's two kids, E and G. It shouldn't be. It really is the backdrop to some of the language we use in our house so I am obligated to put it in.

Like Grace, I'm a proponent of breastfeeding as long as the child wants to have it. I never had the weaning horrors that some people go through. And I know that I'm totally blessed to have had the opportunity and family support to allow my kids to self wean. For my kids, they nursed about 2 years, which means that they were talking some before they stopped breastfeeding. Grace's kids were at the breast a year or two longer. I applaud her patience and devotion to nursing them. (Look at me trying to be all diplomatic against the people who would judge breastfeeding kids. Oh, get over yourself if it is a problem for you. Breasts make food for babies. The perfect food for babies. So there.)

Grace and her husband Jim tell a story about a friend of theirs who breast fed their kids after the kids started speaking. Their friend's child was running around in toddler fashion, and when he became thirsty, he went up to his mother and asked, "Boob?"

From that moment on, Grace and Jim vowed never to be asked for boobs (especially in public) by a hungry child. Instead they taught their kids to refer to their milk dispensers as "nurses." That way if the child wanted to eat, she'd simply ask ,"nurse?" How sweet is that?

The age difference between Grace's two kids is about 8 years, so when G was 4 or 5, E was just starting out that wonderful phase of life:  puberty. Imagine her horror when her little brother inadvertently walked in on her taking a shower and G ran off to report to his parents that E indeed had nurses too! (okay, that last bit wasn't probably necessary to tell my story but still funny, right?)

The lesson from those two stories stuck with Hubby and me, especially when we had our son. We did not want our precious boy's first word to be "boobs." We made a decision to copy Grace and Jim's example and refer to my breasts as nurses.

It's been a word we've used ever since we became parents and it is fully entrenched in our lives. I suppose it can be confusing considering how many registered nurses we have in our family. Amongst my first cousins, I think we have a total of 10. We are a good Filipino family that way -- we make quality health care professionals -- we love our nurses.

The other day, my mother was remarking about how her brother Efren, who spent most of his adult life working in Hawaii and sending money back home for his family in the Philippines, was able to send 6 of his kids to college for their degrees in nursing.

My mom said, "Can you believe your Uncle Efren has six nurses?"

I said, "Wow, that's really impressive."

Lil'T looked absolutely flummoxed. "Uncle Efren has six nurses?!? What the hoonies???" (hoonies = heck for preschoolers)

It took me a beat to realize that Lil'T was trying to figure out how Uncle Efren had so many breasts under his shirt. How the heck did he get the bras? Must be a Costco pack. And since when did men have breasts like Holly our dog? Oh so confusing!

Maybe we ought to refer to breasts as boobs after all.

Broken Legs 2

Turns out that my audio acting debut is uploaded now. It is episode 302, The Sword of Damocles: Part II "The Pursuit."

My lines are in a teaser trailer after the credits. In fact, they say my name a few moments before you even hear my voice. I'm listed as one of the pilots. Woohoo!

Go ahead and have a listen.