Ligthsaber fight Revisited

Again, what has happened to my life that I can utter the phrase, "in my last light saber fight..."? It went well, the fight. Lou failed to adhere to the rules and fought everyone instead of just the girls. Lula took off for the house the first chance she got and LoLo and I just giggled like the idiots we are. Then Lou got clotheslined by, appropriately enough, the clothesline and sustained a scrape to the nose that threatened to bleed. We fought on. For some reason, we quit. It could have been because the dog was laying in the middle of the lawn and we kept tripping over her, or it could have been because we all ran away from Lou and the "zzziiiittt" sound he kept making every time he tagged one of us with his light saber. Still, pretty cool that he can go from Work Lou to Daddy Lou in, like, 20 seconds. That's whiplash speed for me. I can go from nice Mommy to mean Mommy that fast, but I'm still "Mommy". Mysteriously, following the light saber fight, Lo was too "something" to eat dinner or go buy school supplies (Doesn't surprise me as he's still operating on the theory "No pencils...no school"), so the ended up staying home. One his way down the hall to wash his hands, he quietly announced he had a big pooh coming any minute and couldn't possibly leave the house. Huh. Well, then. I guess you stay in. I went to Target, as much to leave the house as to get whatever it was that I got there. When I got home, Lou was yelling, "Jesus Christ, LoLo. If you fart one more time your ass better be hanging out the back door!" Would it surprise you to know that my week got worse?

Jeeze...it's been a long time since I did this. Mostly because I forgot my password and couldn't get in to do anything. Anyway, Summer's winding down. Been kind of a crappy one, in a weather sense. I miss global warming. LoLo saw the pediatrician earlier in the week for his well-kid check-up. $30 to find out what I already knew: healthy. Ah, well. The big mistake was bringing him in right after the week-long trip to Mountain House. The kid's got road rash from forehead to chin (how he didn't break his nose or lose consciousness on that one, we'll never now) bruises and a scrape down one leg from "falling into the flowers" (WTF?!?). The fact that I didn't end the night in custody is slightly mind-boggling. Slightly. Now, all we have to do is get through the next week. School starts a week from Tuesday and then we're all off and running. In some ways, I think I'm busier in the summer, with camps and what not, but I always find myself looking forward to September. When Lula started Kindergarten, I was scared to death for the both of us. With good reason...I had to scrape her off my leg for a week at drop off. Talk about misery. Absolutely awful. And the worst of it: I was embarrassed about making a scene. Ass. When LoLo started Kindergarten, I was afraid he wasn't ready, that they would hold it against him that we went against their judgment and put him in on time. Oh, and he was the ONLY KID IN SHORTS! Everyone else went to Mass the day before and got the dress uniform clarification. I am convinced he had no clue. More mortification! I'm getting better at leaving myself out of it all, but jeeze, shorts? Now that I think about it, he may have been deeply traumatized by the experience as he now refuses to wear the green polo's...only white for my man! Now he's always within spitting distance of dress uniform. Stubby and I are looking forward to a little quiet time. I've got a list of things to do that weren't realistic during the summer. Paint the bathroom, get the pull in the carpet fixed, watch all my DVR'd shows that no one wanted to watch with me, dig the weeds in the yard, begin working out again. Stubby wants to sleep in the sun, in the shade, in the family room and the foyer. She also wants to go to pick-up every day and eat at her regular times. In between, we have a couple of events we're involved in putting on, one event we're just going to and a birthday or two. So much for down time...

Congratulations to a great family full of good friends on the birth of Madeline Margaret! I hope you come to love us as much as we already love you.

My husband and I have a prenup. No, not because one of us came into the marriage with greater wealth than the other, but because I want to win. Not only do I want to win, I want you to lose. I believe in running up the score, preserving a shut-out, bunting for a base hit to break up a no-no. I believe that no lead is safe until the final out, the clock reads 0.0, or everyone is in the clubhouse. I want to win. So, my husband and I have a prenup: I agreed to watch all of our children’s games from the trunk of the car and he agreed to marry me. Anyone with children already knows that I am in breach of contract. There’s no way around it. But I have an even bigger problem and that is the current thinking in children’s organized sports: Build self-esteem, good sportsmanship, and a desire to play though not keeping score, maintaining standings or developing skilled-position players. What?!? Are you fucking kidding me? Who does that? Who wants to play a game they can’t win? Never mind that you’re building a false sense of self. Children keep score. They know when they’ve won or lost and they don’t buy the “we’re all winners” bullshit. They have an innate sense of competition. Good sportsmanship is fostered when children have the opportunity to learn how to win and how to lose. And some kids just don’t wanna pitch…or get out of goal for that matter. Last night, my daughter played in her U10 soccer match. Without getting bogged down in the dreary details of suburban life, her team is phenomenal. She is not the best player on the team, but she doesn’t hurt the team either. I’m good with that, but the killer in me would just like to see the killer in her. To see her not apologize when she kicks someone, to see her run all out, to see her learn the strategy of the game and play with that in mind. I want to see her want to win and you to lose. In the fourth quarter, her coaches put her in as a defender. Kicking with all her U10 might she cleared ball after ball. She maintained her field with precision. On a corner kick, she got in goal and booted the shot right over everyone’s head. She ran off the pitch after her match, eyes bright, grinning ear to ear. “ I told Coach I wanted to play defender and he asked,’Why?’ and I said, “Because I love it and I’m good.” A killer is born. (I hope her husband gets a prenup!)

I’m somebody’s mom. Actually, I’m two somebody’s mom, but that reads funny and doesn’t have the impact I was going for so “I am somebody’s mom.” I’ve been one for nearly nine years now, and I think I’ve got the hang of it. It’s taken two c-sections, a CT scan, a stolen pen, failed tests and the possibility of orthodontia. But I think I’m getting there. You’ll notice that these events have one thing in common: a litany of failures. No one goes into motherhood giddy over abdominal surgery and every parent who awaits the results of their toddler’s CT is hopeful that CPS won’t have carted them off before the doctor comes back. And who’s not convinced that failing a fourth grade science test dooms there daughter to a life of, ugh, retail sales? Orthodontia pretty much speaks for itself. The failures pop out at you, like putting purple eyeliner on the lid of a green eye…POP. Parenting success is more like peach blush…blends nicely so no one knows its there. It’s a screw job for both you and your kids. I should be touting her swimming medal, his selection to the All-Star Game his first year in baseball, and her B+ average. Nope. Just the bad bits. Why? Who knows? Maybe you don’t want to be “That Parent.” (Oh, and you know who you are. Reliving your lost (misspent?) youth through your child who doesn’t really want to play soccer, but feels obligated since at least one of you is taking so much joy in it.) Or maybe you’re mean and miserable, incapable on acknowledging anything good in your life. Or maybe you’ve learned so much more about yourself in those moments than you’ve ever learned in success. When my daughter was found to be in a breech position at 36 weeks, I learned that I lied to my husband, my doctor and anyone else who suggested that delivering a healthy baby was more important than how the kid got there. I wanted my labor, my epidural and my delivery just like everyone else. I wanted to sweat like a pig, be even meaner to everyone around me than I was when I was pregnant and sink into medicated bliss as the anesthesiologist slipped back out into the hall. I wanted to push and be called “a trouper”. Wasn’t too excited about the whole “tearing” thing, but was nearly convinced that it was a small price to pay for fulfilling my female destiny, or some such nonsense. Turns out, I rocked scheduled c-sections. I mean, I was good. Easy going (no, really, I was.) relaxed, all smiles and no sweating. And a healthy little girl. On the downside: Terrified of standing upright for two weeks and serious “voiding” issues. I will leave it at that. When my son fell off the play structure and sustained pretty good concussion, I learned that one never really loses the craving for a cigarette; they just get good at pushing it away. I quit to get married and really never regretted the choice…until I sat in the ER on Memorial Day waiting to see how bad it really was. My initial need was to barf, but since he’d already done that three times, I felt adding to that would be overkill. While I was filling out the reams of paperwork required, I could smell the fresh smoke on the man behind me. What was a distant calling in my brain became a shrill screech in my ear: Nothing a butt couldn’t get you through. Thank God Security arrived to “take me back” (Since when did the ER get so dangerous? I remember being told to follow the color-coded lines to get where I needed to be. I wandered unattended for days back there, but that’s another story.) The kid was fine: groggy and smelling like rotten milk, but fine. And then there’s orthodontia. Let’s face it. That’s your own genetic failure visited upon your children. The sins of the mother and all that. My daughter is a nearly perfect clone of me, right down to a wicked overbite. She’s a finger-sucker. Has been since they pulled her out and plopped her on the warming table (You’ll remember, she was born via c-section and I was busy begging the anesthesiologist for generous post-op pain med orders.) At four, the dentist suggested she be broken of the habit as she was totally screwing up her bite. Given that “two fingers” were a source of comfort for her (that doesn’t read right, either, but I’m not sure how else to say it.) we decided, eh, let her go. We’ll deal with it later. She’s nearly nine. We’re now staring down the barrel at “two-phase” treatment plans and headgear. I’d like to be able to blame her. I would. I don’t need any more guilt, but I went through the same things and never sucked more than spaghetti off my plate. So. My education will continue. I just hope the learning curve’s not so steep.