why i run

this weekend i ran the dallas marathon in, um, dallas.  at the expo (which is where you pick up your race number and then exit the gift shop of running gear), there was a both set up where you wrote down your answer to 'why i run' and then filmed a short video about it.  the videos were played on a loop at mile something or another to inspire runners as the passed and while i DID see the video on the course, i managed to catch about 2 seconds of footage and was not, in fact, inspired.  but i was glad at least to put down on paper the underlying motivation behind my endless running:

one day i hope they ARE proud or at least forgiving of my long sunday evening runs.

gooooooooooal. or bassssssssket. or scoooooooore.

yesterday was bea's very first basketball practice.  ever.  i decided to give it a try since she would always try to play at hardie's practices and - much like her dear old mother - prefers indoor, air-conditioned sports.  so far, bea has shown little more than a placating enjoyment of soccer, ballet, and running so i figured i'd keep trying things until she seemed excited or angrily rebelled.

basketball...success!

we got to the gym early and shot some hoops (see how hip i am to the lingo?), just the three of us.  i taught bea how to throw the ball and aim for the basket as best i could.  [disclaimer: i am terrible at basketball.  i made all of three, um, goals? baskets? last night and was pretty proud of myself until i realized that i was shooting at the basket that was lowered for small children.]  anyway she seemed to enjoy herself and i was glad that i'd decided to practice a little before practice, hoping that it would give her a confidence boost if she knew a little bit on how to play.  she was initially reluctant to join her practice since she is the only girl on the team but once she got past that (after about a minute) she played and laughed and ran and dribbled and made a basket on her first try (this feat would not be repeated).  she started to cry at one point at having been denied an opportunity to shoot but i steadfastly refused to comfort or even look at her.  i felt horrible but i want her to learn to control her emotions and not depend so much on me to be there to comfort her at every little perceived slight of the universe toward her gentle soul.  for the record, she doesn't have a gentle soul she has a keen sense of manipulation and knows that any time she so much as makes a whimper, i will run to her and hold her.  not that she isn't sensitive, but i'd say i'm dealing with 30% genuine sensitivity and 70% sneaky.  eventually she went to the coach - who very firmly but fairly did NOT tolerate her fit - and told him that she was upset at not having her turn to throw the ball.  it was a complete departure from the beatrice i know who refuses to open her mouth or confront her fears.  she was upset, she told the person who made her upset, he didn't budge and she went back to playing (and maybe still crying a little).  it sounds small, but this is a HUGE step for my once shy little munchkin.  at home, she took off her jersey and excitedly asked me to wash it so it would be ready for her game on saturday.  later i told her that i was proud of her and that she was gaining confidence.  then she asked what 'confidence' meant and i had an awkward time explaining this and we totally got off the subject and chatted about jewelry. 

hopefully the enthusiasm will continue throughout the week and hopefully someone else will explain what it means to be confident.

i couldn't get a shot of bea but here is spiderhardie playing
basketball with a mask.  and a volleyball.

gobble gobble hey

i'm not sure when, exactly, i started hating thanksgiving but at some point in my life i decided that spending an entire day shoveling food into my mouth shouldn't be considered a national holiday.  i can do that any day.  in fact, i do that most days and with a lot less ceremony.  since we don't have a lot (any) family here, i wanted to make a tradition for the kids that was meaningful or at least memorable so i signed us all up for the houston turkey trot and spent the morning running the streets of houston with thousands of other people not at home cooking.

the trot included 3 different races, each with different starting times.  there was exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes between the start of the 10k and the kids' run so i figured i could run the ~6.2 miles and make it to run with the kids.  my worst case scenario would have me finishing at just an over (leaving a whole 1/2 hour to get to the kids) but i ended up hitting a PR and finishing in 51:56.  clearly i need to put my kids at the finish line of every race.  the munchkins did very well in their races, both running MOST of the time.  hardie took a cone to the face and spent a minute or so howling in pain but got back down and finished.  i still don't know whether they actually enjoy running.  they are both so! excited! before the race and claim to have fun but seem grumpy before and just after.  admittedly, lining up for a race is terribly boring and finishing is a little anti-climatic so i guess i can't really blame them for not being super happy yay at those moments - i just wish i knew whether they honestly enjoying themselves or just placating me.  

my second attempt at creating a thanksgiving tradition was taking the kids to the houston uptown lighting...thing.  i had a vague notion of what this event was, fostered entirely by a flyer i got in my turkey trot race packet.  it seemed to be a ceremony wherein santa claus would arrive and magically light a twinkling winter wonderland of christmas decorations.  i envisioned blinking trains and animatronic elves and maybe even an ironic window display.  i pictured walking hand-in-hand with my babies, oooohing and awwwing while sipping hot chocolate and discussing what a fantastic new tradition this was and how lucky they were to have such a mother.

this is what the event ACTUALLY looked like.  tens of thousands of people milling about the street and waiting for...yeah, i never quite figured out what we were waiting for but i'm pretty sure it was the 10 minutes of (admittedly nice) fireworks that were half blocked by a building despite the three of us having fought our way through this crowd to get a 'good' spot.  the lights?  a series of trees aaaaaaaaaand that's it.  there were no elves, no trains, no irony.  just a couple dozen cone trees wrapped in white lights.  i am never trusting a flyer again.  we made the most of it and by 'most' i mean the most sugar.

sugar

more sugar

a picture is worth at least 2-3 words

since i clearly didn't learn my lesson with the color run, this weekend the kids participated in a 1K on the beach in Galveston.  they both seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves but i suspect this was due in no small part to the proximity of the water and the repeated promises of post-race donuts.  they both finished middle-of-the-pack and i like to think they get their competitive edge from me.  yay team average!

post-race, post-donut, post-winter-swim, we carbo-loaded because, um, we were hungry?  i like to justify over-eating by reminding everyone around me that i run a lot.  i'm pretty sure that i'd have to run a marathon every day to compensate for the dozen cookies i sometimes eat for breakfast but, meh, i'm happy.  and i love cookies.

i thought bea was trying to make a heart...
but she was making right/left with her fingers.
so much for that touching moment.

legit touching moment

the color of running

saturday marked what i expected to be the highlight of my ~7 years of parenting - the moment that my interests and my child's merged together in some magical cosmic swirl of happiness.  bea and i ran a 5k. 

sort of.

the race was the houston color run and the whole point of the run was to get splashed with dyed cornstarch while shuffling about the streets of downtown houston.  while the 'race' wasn't timed, there was at least a vague expectation of jogging between cornstarch throwing stations (each ~1k apart).  i can knock out a 5k in about 25-26 minutes on a good day.  it took us over an hour to reach the finish line.

bea was only able to run about a quarter of a mile before getting a stitch in her side and spent the remainder of the run apologizing to me.  it was pretty much the lowlight of my ~7 years of parenting.  i have become one of those overbearing mothers that eventually get featured on a tlc reality show berating their daughters for not excelling in something they (the daughter) clearly has no personal interest in.  bea hated running but i think she hated disappointing me even more.  we managed to cheer one another up after some hugging and crying on an overpass and played in the last cornstarch station, yellow.  i am presently googling child-friendly salons in houston for a mother/daughter manicure outing - i figure its only fair to do something that i don't like but would make the beazle happy. 

o beautiful for spacious skies

election day is here at last and the munchkins and i voted this morning (early voting is for non-ceremonial suckers).  it was a little nostalgic since hardie was just a few weeks old and bea a mere toddler when we voted in the 2008 election but that nostalgia quickly gave way to regret as i tried to wrangle too pop-tart-infused kids through the crowded polling place.  both kids kept trying to push buttons and run around and peek at what other people were doing and run around and sit on the floor and run around and run around and run around.  i managed to keep their attention long enough to have them vote on a local school bond issue and then the three of us pressed the big red 'cast ballot' button together.

yay democracy!

where oh where has my little blog gone

since robby's iraq visa has been stalled for weeks, i haven't had much need to update my little blog here.  doesn't make sense to document the kids' life for their dad when he is around, right?  thing is?  i miss it.  i miss being able to reflect on our lives and sometimes maybe have a poignant insight into...yeah, who am i kidding - i like posting pictures of my children.

i'm also having a bittersweet morning since last night i said goodbye to the last vestige of babyhood - hardie now sleeps in big boy panties.  i didn't attempt overnight potty training with either of my kids, figuring the financial cost of pull-ups to be less than the physical and emotional cost of waking up to take a sleeping baby to the bathroom so they don't wet the bed.  i figured i'd just let it go and eventually it would work itself out, hopefully before junior high.  with each, i waited until i could no longer remember a wet pull-up in the morning and just stopped bothering with them.  so last night, a Very Excited Hardie got to sleep in big boy panties.  while i'm super excited to save the cash and cabinet space by not requiring giant bags of disposable underpants, i kept help but look around and see nary a single baby item.  no diapers, no pacifiers, no bottles, no sippy cups, no tiny utensils, no tiny plates, no clothes with snaps, no alphabet blocks.  my kids watch cartoons with plots and brush their own hair and ride bikes without training wheels.  they lose teeth and tie shows and tell each other secrets.  they still come to me when they get hurt or want to be held but, mostly, i am slowly drifting away from the center of their universe. 

i applaud their independence but a part of my heart aches knowing that i will never again inhale the weird cheerios breath of my newborn baby.  i guess i'll have to make due with awkwardly sticking my nose into babies who do not belong to me.  i apologize in advance, present and future new mothers.  

big boy with flashlight

Hiatus

Since I keep this primarily for the benefit of Robby while he's overseas, I am taking a brief hiatus while he is in the states and I am stuck in Fort Worth for work.

Be back next week.

world 8

in an effort to break the kids of their wii habit, i try to keep them out of the house as much as possible.  sure - it would be easier to just stand my ground and NOT allow them to play while we're home but there is only so much screaming and thrashing one human being can take before caving.  thankfully, the kids have made it through 8 of the 9 worlds in mario.  my fingers are crossed that they save the damn princess within the next week and slowly lose interest.  hopefully.

since i like to prove that my kids' intellect is not rapidly deteriorating with every bleep and bloop of video games, i try to squeeze in actual knowledge around the mundane tasks of life.  over dinner, i tried to explain halves and fourths using our food.  i'm pretty sure the take-away from this lesson is that one half of spinach equals zero because hardie doesn't like yucky stuff.  otherwise, i am pleased to announced that bea has mastered the four cardinal directions.  while taking a bath, she made a pirate ship, complete with compass, and then explained which direction each pirate's sword was facing.  i tried to explain fractions using spinach and tilapia, bea explains north and south using weapons.  clearly we are never ever ever going to make it in regular school. 

freebirds etiquette lesson

a lesson in itchy foilage

counting black beans

the arts: literature and fashion

weekend wrap-up, now with more napping

this weekend was both busy and profoundly lazy.  saturday was the last bout of the derby season (yay) and the kids came with me to see the game.

i'd like to say that this was the end of the night, but this is pretty much what the kids did while i skated.  after the game bea woke up enough to congratulate me on my win but went right back to sleep.  i don't think hardie woke up at all.  they are so supportive, those tiny people.

no one was interested in church sunday morning.  no one.

but things got a little rosier at breakfast. 

i'd like to say that we spent the balance of sunday being active and not watching tv or playing wii but i would also like to say that i don't lie so, um, yeah.  in an effort to not feel completely useless, we did have two really bad science lesson.  the first was dissecting a wasp's nest and the second was popping popcorn.  in both instances i was learned that, for the most part, i am science dumb.  i also learned that writhing wasp pupae are universally creepy.  next week i will either look up actual information before exposing my kids to 'um, yeah...the popcorn...gets...hot? and then explodes.  it makes a cool noise.'

staph meeting

did i mention that the kids' staph infection is finally under control?  did i mention that my own staph infection is not? 

stupid kid cooties.

censored for decency's sake

appropriate math

i don't know if elementary academics have changed dramatically in the last 29 years or if i've just successfully blocked out my own first grade experience but there seems to be an awful lot of homework for bea every night.  it may be the vague 'read.  do math.' instructions from her school or the guilt-inducing paper i have to fill out every night outlining exactly what we did and for how long but it seems like most of what we do every night is homework.  probably inappropriate homework.  i admit that i have no idea what a first grader should be reading or mathing.  the workbooks i found at barnes and noble that were labeled for bea's age group seemed ridiculously simple so i opted for generic math skills that offered work that would likely be challenging or at least more interesting than grouping flowers and adding 1+4.  similarly, my knowledge of reading levels goes from 'good night moon' to 'great expectations'.  also i'm not joking - i plan to introduce my kids to the flaming miss havisham just as soon as i find an expensive paperback version.  since the school year began, we've read tom sawyer, some halloween fairy nonsense, and started huckleberry finn.  admittedly i sort of regretted the tom sawyer bit but by the time i got to the overt racism and murder we were already pretty involved in the plot and it seemed a shame to put it down...then it seemed a shame to not continue the adventures.  at this rate, my kids will be amazingly well-read and able to do calculus by fifth grade but not be able to find michigan on a map.  or write in cursive.  or play four square.  one day i'm going to find my kids in a dark alley watching hannah montana on tv and surrounded by empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers. 

'two trains leave detroit at 2pm heading north...'

no gooooooooooooooooooooooooooal

yesterday was the first day of the fall soccer season and it was a total fail.  bea's coach didn't show up, nor did most of the team which leads me to believe that some sort of communication went out that we were not a part of either changing the day or the time or both.  so we used the opportunity to go to the pool and experience a late summer swimming fail - a freak cold front moved in and the pool was freezing.  overall, not a very sporty day but at least we stayed busy.

in school news, i happened to see bea walking with her class on friday and it didn't look like she'd made much progress in the social sphere.  she was walking alone, head down, at least 3 feet from another child.  i talk to her every night about school and she never mentions being lonely and she talks about other kids so i'm not sure if i just happen to always catch her at a lonely moment or if she interacts with a lot of people on a superficial level but doesn't have anyone she considers a friend.  hardie is ever aloof and almost never acknowledges that anyone else exists in his world outside of his immediate family.  academically they are both doing well.  bea is excelling at math in a way that is almost intimidating.  she seems to enjoy the montessori environment though sometimes i wonder whether it contributes to her isolation.  hardie's teachers make a point of chasing us down the hallway to say what a great student he is and how much of a joy he is to have in their class.  i suspect that he spends all day in quiet complacency waiting for the moment when he gets to play wii. 

not soccer

not soccer

not pleasant

a day in the life

our schedule these days can be best summed up by the following saturday morning quote from beatrice: 'why can't we ever just sleep and sleep until we're done with sleeping?'  exclusive of extracurricular activities (the kids' and my own) we have about 3 minutes of every day that isn't obligated to some Very Important Task.  bea started back at ballet on thursday and this week both kids start a new soccer season.  thankfully, my own derby season ends this weekend so that will free up a little time...to be filled with the height of race season.  sigh.

as for the weekend - i didn't manage to document anything other than our trip for ice cream and dance performance at miller outdoor theater.  the excitement here is that bea discovered butter finger as an ice cream/yogurt topping. 

pretty pictures

today was an exercise in artistic achievement.  hardie has taken up bea's favorite technique of coloring in rainbow.  i'm not sure where the D ran off to in his name or why the H A R all look suspiciously similar but i'm pleased with the development of both his increased interest in writing and his flair for, well, flair.

a study in rainbow letter by hardie

i love you, ikea pillow by bea

rainbow fish, kicking hello kitty ass by hardie

this has to be my favorite creation of the evening.  as it was explained to me, this is an illustration of bea's birthday party at a school called 'B-Fun'.  bea is represented at the bumble bee, while i am the butterfly and hardie is the fly.  there is also a bird, a fly, fire ant, a catepillar, and a grasshopper. since only some of the creatures can fly, those without wings are floating on leaves.  in the corner is a lonely sugar ant who is shaking his body so that he might look more like a spider.  everyone is having a snowball fight and has a grey snowball in their...hands? except for the sugar ant/spider.  he's already thrown his to the fly.  i am now more than ever intrigued by what goes on that little blonde head of bea.  it must be a fabulous place.  and also a terrifying place with changeling attack insects.  

laboring day of love. and wii.

i try to fill our days with activities other than playing wii, which has become the kids' most favorite activity.  ever.  ever.  the official guideline for 'screen time' is no more than 2 hours per day but if you've ever had to sit through 2 hours of the super mario brothers' theme song you will recognize that this is roughly 1 hour and 55 minutes too much.  it is also remarkably difficult to find 2 hours worth of activities that are as engaging as mario or as conducive to napping on the couch while the kids play in the (virtual) sewers.  and so labor day was a day of errands and shopping and car washing and math and heat...and wii.  and a nap.

hardie was not so excited to leave the house (wii) and would only do so as spiderman. 

since bea's daily homework is a vague 'do math' and i have no idea how to teach math, i am stumbling through teaching her whatever math i can think of that might be easy to explain.  addition and subtraction, some easy times tables, geometry.  i don't know if i'm helping or ultimately harming here since i'm not instructing in any sort of state-mandated, foundations-of-learning, this-will-come-in-handy sort of way.  i'm just throwing out some numbers and shapes and theories and seeing what happens.  also there is no theory teachings, i just liked the way that sentence sounded.

haphazard math lesson

haphazard math lesson nap

when we've resorted to math problems for fun, its time to go ahead and admit that the day is super lame and probably it would be better to just give in, play wii, and pretend that that whole geometry lesson never happened.

aaaaaaaaaand wii

since its pretty apparent in this photo, hardie's staph infection isn't improving.  he's developing sores on his back, his neck, and on his scalp.  they don't seem to be getting as infected as bea's got but what they lack in germ they make up for in quantity.  every night i find myself putting medicine on more and more of his little body.  i just can't get on top of it.  thankfully it has not had an impact on his ability to play wii.  thankfully.

sunday at the children's museum