Grit

The Coop in the middle and leading the pack.

I observed something in my oldest this weekend. Something I liked, but can't really describe. But I think it was grit.

He is such a good little breaststroke swimmer. Really. This is not me bragging. He is good at it. He's a natural. His body was made for it. He loves it.

The other strokes are just warm up for what he considers the big race. Because the Indiviual Medley -- or IM -- includes the breaststroke he likes that one too. Saturday, however, he DQd in the IM. After absolutely improving in every way on butterfly, he settled into a questionable pace for backstroke and then -- and this will be all swimmer-y and technical -- he flipped an illegal turn on the back to breast transition. Guh. And he knew it. So the rest of the race was just painful for him.

Out of the water he put on a good face. I actually thought to myself, "Oh I guess Coop IS a 9-year-old who swims for fun. This doesn't bother him at all." Plus, I'd like to point out, he caught up his first relay team to ensure a win, won the breaststroke, placed in the 100-meter freestyle, and swam up with the 11-12-year-olds in the 4x50-meter freestyle relay to win. This one DQ out of five very successful races seemed like peanuts.

Then Sunday rolled around and we went about our business. A family walk cut short by a going-away party at the swimming pool. None of the other kids are swim team kids. So I knew Coop would get in some relaxing play in the water.

When I showed up to take him home, I found him away from the group and in the lap pool. The kid was swimming his turn over and over and over, again. I had to tell him he was wonderful. Get out. Rest.

Some of us have this. This drive to practice so much that we not only do something perfectly, we never do anything but perfect. Some of us don't. Coop has two gifts. He was given great turn-out and a body for breastroke. But he also has the gift of grit. It's the second I admire.

Swim team friends are fun friends!

Everybody In The Pool

I'm always shocked my sons swim. Something I made from scratch can swim. I can't even pretend I'm a proficient swimmer. So, I brag on the first dive of every season. Especially since the season starts with three days of cancelations due to snow -- it's an outdoor pool. On the fourth day, 51 degrees and partly cloudy, Coop jumped in with the rest of them. He's a beast. A scrawny, 60 lb, size 24 jammer, and zero body fat, but he is a beast. 

That is why I am totally confused. On the last day of school my Coop came home carrying a lime green pillowcase filled with the junk of his desk. You can imagine the contents: chewed pencils, unfinished homework, graded papers, toilet paper roll totem pole, and a memory book.  I paid particular attention to the memory book seeing as I've forgotten so much lately.

Flipping through the pages there were a few expected assignments -- all teachers give them -- and a few surprises. 

Expected assignment: a visual representation of words that describe Cooper. He has dreamed them up himself and colored the pictures in bright colors. Phrases he uses to describe himself include: I'm a good at swimming. I'm not good at hula hoops. I like playing with my brother. I want to be an amazing swimmer. I do not want to be a mean man. I feel excited when I win a race. I do not like cats!

Unexpected assignment: a New Year's Resolution. Actually, the assignment itself did not surprise me.  What surprised me is what he wrote. (Let me reiterate, this was completed in the classroom. This was not a home assignment. My hands and eyes did not touch this document until 6 months after it was written. It read, "My New Years resolution is to make it to the All stars. I will complete my goal by going to every practice. I will also complete this goal by not goofing around during practices. The last thing I will need to do to accomplish my goal is listening to what my coaches and parents say. As you can see I've got a lot to do, but I am definitely going to reach my goal!!!"

"Interesting," I thought to myself. Later that night I told him I had read his goal and that I would help him any way I could. This is about the same time I ordered new jammers for the season, cleaned out the swim bag, and moved all the pool towels down to the laundry room for a freshen up. 

Then the boy asked to see All Star times. I swear it. This turned into a whole conversation in which he realized that now he would have to swim 50- and 100-meters races to compete as a 9-10 boy. Very funny stuff. 

After that, I was catching up with an old friend, also a swim mom. I told her the story of Coop asking about times and he stood there and denied it. 

I'm new at this tween parenting thing. Did I embarrass him? He put the monster goal out there. He asked to see the times. But only I can know?!?!? Weird times at this swim fan's house.

Mason often gets the pool to himself during night practices because all the swim team kids go to the lap pool. And everyone else goes home. He loves it!

This pictures shows how far ahead Coop got his relay team -- you can't even see the other competitors!

Memory

I messed something up.

I didn't realize it, of course, until I sat down to do something else.

That's right, let's start peeling back the onion of everything I do inefficiently. First, I used to make a yearly scrapbook for myself, my in-laws, and my parents for Christmas. It had a year of pictures and then a few captions in it. To make my life easier -- this is basically my mantra as I'm in the action of making my life harder -- I would look back at my blog and refresh my memory with my own stories of what had happened in the past year. Let me tell you, the years run together after age 30.

Today of all days, Memorial Day, I was looking for a picture of my grandpa that I wanted to use here and to show my kids how amazingly young he was when he entered service. I sat down and after one project turned into another and an hour turned into 8 I drew a blank. Couldn't tell you when school started, who was on what team, what lessons we took, who visited us, if we went anywhere. True and legitimate debacle. Plus I can't find the picture of my grandpa which really chaps my hide!

After fiddling with the pictures for something like 27 days, I opened up my old blog. Only three months in 2013 had been captured -- and rather shabbily at that. But the stories I read made me cry. I wasn't emotional because of the quality of work. I was so sad that I would have otherwise forgotten some fairly precious moments with my babies.

So, now I'm in a pickle. I don't have babies anymore. In fact, they both have feet nearly as big as mine. And no, I'm not one of those pixie people with dainty feet. I'm trying to remember back to when they still wore zippy PJs and held my hand on the way to school. Damn it, I can't. It's not alzheimer's.  It's the speed of life.

The blog is a kindness to myself. I have enough critics, so I'm giving this to myself. Be it selfish desires, I still think it's a worthy cause. Now, if I can just get those kids to do April 2013-May 2014, again. And seriously where is that picture of my grandpa?

Feats of Strength

We had a fairly big weekend. In terms of living in the suburbs, you could say it was a heavy hardware weekend. The Coop played in the Lacrosse Championships of his league/division/small corner of the world and won. Then the following day he endured the chaos of a kid triathlon. Both adventures earned him a medal. He's kinda a big deal.

What we didn't expect, was to have our Mason recognized, too. Following the lacrosse game it was parent paparazzi everywhere. I got some amazing pictures of Cooper. But what I missed with my lens and must capture here is what Cooper's coach did for Mason. He gave him a medal for his support! Indeed Mason went to every practice and every game. He was Cooper's no. 1 fan. He has his own stick and was Coop's practice partner in the backyard. Coach will never know the significance of this to me. 

After the excitement of the day blew over and we were watching TV, Mason started nonchalantly doing sit ups. Then he moved on to push ups. Before we knew it he was working the tricep-dip on the stairs and holding a wall-sit for an eternity. We sat up, we noticed. Like it was nothing, he lunged past us on the couch and asked if we could think of any hard exercises for him. The night continued on with us thinking of truly difficult feats of strength for Mason. Anything and everything we invented, he tried. If you know Mason, you know this is a thing. I can't help but think he was boosted by his hard-earned hardware. 

Can't wait for high school track when I see that kick!

Reasons

We all have reasons.

But I've taken 425 days to review mine. This might seem like an exaggeration. But you clearly don't know me. Perhaps you would like to ask me how shopping for a new dishwasher went?

Anyways. 

The reasons for not writing a blog are pretty clear: 

People will think you are stupid. 

People will say you're not an expert.

People will make fun of blogs in general because in general blogs are about things no one really cares about.

People will say you are not a writer. 

A few reasons to write a blog:

People say that they read it -- and they have their reasons, who are you to argue.

People will say you are a writer. 

People don't matter. What you really need to accomplish is remembering what happened at the speed of life, once upon a time when your kids were little. 

I accidentally quit this blog. There was no profound moment when I threw up my hands and declared, "This is the end." It just happened. 

In fact the last time I thought, "Hmmm I should write a blog entry," I sat down and wrote a long list of all the topics I wanted to cover. The really important stuff like what my favorite mascara is. That's when I realized, actually, I shouldn't blog. 

In my mind there is a difference between writing and blogging. In the beginning, blogging was fun. It was a record. It was fairly personal. It gave my introvert brain a chance to mull over everything I'd seen in a day and chit chat with myself about it. 

Then it became a thing. Like an audience thing. And people around me had blogs. Fancy blogs that had relevant information. They tracked their visitors, and recruited sponsors, and became like an overnight sensation. Made books deals!

I never wanted that. Never had that. Never tried to have that. 

This is just a little group  of essays on daily life. Just me missing my craft. Wait, that's a little overstated. I'm not like a world-renowned basketweaver or anything. So I don't really have a craft per se. But I am never short on opinions. I listen to people -- particularly my kids -- and I write down what they say. I make a fair amount of grammatical errors much to the dismay of one of my favorite teachers. But even she  Facebook-liked (that's a verb, right?) the idea of a resurrection.  

And just like that, I'm back. 

Shutterbabies

As our children mature around us there are times when I take a step back and feel confused. It's like I realize they've gotten to a place that's a bit more grown up and I know that they have reached the next stage but I didn't really feel it go by. Well, we're there, again.

This past week has been Spring Break in these parts. You might imagine that we would escape to warmer climes. So did we. But in reality we stayed really close to home and had a great time. One of our adventures was entering a photocontest that the kids noticed in a flyer that came home from school.

It honored Ansel Adams' 111th birthday. 

When I explained to the boys what good 'ol Ansel was famous for and the images that really set him apart from other nature photographers they actually understood. And that is how I found myself hiking one of my favorite running trails with both boys and a camera. 

They were both excited to use my camera. But they approached the project completely differently. Mason had remembered the trail from a hike we took about one year ago. He was determined to get to the view he was remembering and he would have none of the "views exploration" which Cooper and I were doing. 

Meanwhile, as I said, Cooper was stopping every 30 steps saying, "Oh this is a great view Mom." Until finally I had to crush his artistic heart and say, "NO, no it is not." This is how we stopped and started up the hill to find our artistic voice. 

Someone took this one of me, not sure which one. Not my best side. But hey, can't take yourself too seriously at my age. 

And here are their entries:

MASON, age 6

COOPER, age 8

We All Need Someone

Mom, when you were little did you have an imaginary friend?

Absolutely.

What was his name?

Mr. Fox.

Was he a boy or a girl?

MISTER Fox was a boy.

What did he look like?

I think he was like a fox that walked like a grown up.
So do you have an imaginary friend?

Yes.

What does he look like?

He has like skinny arms and he is yellow.

Like Sponge Bob?

No, like a little fluff ball with crazy eyes.

like The Lorax?

No, that guy has a mustache and my friend just has a really nice smile. He always listens to me.