What's So Amazing About Really Deep Thoughts

                            
Last night we attended my husband's company Christmas party -except it was in January so they called it a "Winter Bash." I was grateful. December is always jammed packed, so this was much better. It was a good excuse to dress up and go downtown for a free dinner.

I wound up sitting next to my husband's co-worker and his wife. They have 3 kids: an elementary aged kid, a toddler and a baby. They talked about what life is like - waking up in the middle of the night, sippy cups, changing diapers. We listened as they lamented about how expensive it is. I feel like parents of young children don't look at us like we are "real" parents anymore. We are not in the trenches. I have not wiped my kid's asses since Facebook debuted.

You WANT to tell them that it gets easier. But let's be real....it's all downhill from here. The minute parenting stops being physically exhausting it automatically flips to be emotionally exhausting. Diapers, wipes, and daycare are expensive......but that doesn't get better. Between paying for sports, instruments, cell phone plans, clothing, summer camps. It's rough. Now we really need to plan ahead because we'll have to pay for driving school this summer for my oldest and car insurance for her. There will be ACT/SAT test prep, there will be yearbooks and class rings and proms. The next 3-5 years will be pricey and then we get to help pay for college for the next 6 years after that. We have just surrendered ourselves to it at this point.

When they become fully functioning independent adults we won't even know what to do with ourselves. We're going to think we are Rockefellers.

After we talked about the children, we talked about our houses. This couch that they hate that eats everything. The HVAC unit that was installed wrong when the house was built. Flood insurance. This is adulting. You start having opinions about things like flood insurance and property taxes. You have a favorite burner and a junk drawer with rubber bands, a screwdriver, and some loose batteries. You frown when you notice the layer of dust on your baseboards.

I am a suburban mother. Through and through. I wake up in the morning and make breakfast and pack lunches. I shuttle kids to school. I carpool. I cook nutritious dinners and I bake cookies. I tend to the flowers in the hanging baskets in my porch. I kiss my husband when he gets home from work in the evening. I am completely ordinary.

I don't mind it, really, but I find it amusing. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I didn't marry my husband.

I would have attended college in North Jersey. I would have been a little wild. I'd move to New York City and be happy there for a while. Overtime, I would grow weary of the cold weather and people that take themselves so seriously. I'd find myself in some small mountain town in North Carolina.

I'd write trash novels with a lot of mystery and a little bit of sex. I'd live in some studio apartment above a hipster coffee bar. The floors would be pine and covered with oriental rugs. The place would be bright and cheery and I'd have shelves and shelves of books. I'd have a small balcony with a worn rocking chair and wind chimes hanging. I'd wear tea dresses and sandals and have long hair that I'd wear in a bread and a tiny, silver nose ring.

I'd have a  grey cat named Scarlet who I want to be a lap cat but she just sits on the edge of the couch and just looks at me with resting bitch face. I'll have one good friend. His name is Tom. He is tall, gay and teases me for my fashion choices. I adore him. I'd exist on coffee and antidepressants. I text my family with vague promises to visit them, but I won't. I do send birthday cards to my siblings and nieces and nephews to assuage my guilt.

I take lovers. We drink wine in the evenings and they confess their love for me but I just laugh. We make love with all the lights on but I kick them out of my bed in the morning without even offering them a cup of coffee. I'd be loney but not too upset about it. I'd smile at babies in the grocery store and lament that I'd never have children of my own because I know, deep down that I would not be a good mother.

Some people will read that and think I'm just some rambling, crazy person but others will understand what I'm tying to say.

I am living the life I am supposed to be living, and it is a good life. I am grateful for it but there are little pieces of this free spirit inside of me. Living in suburbia is good for the children. It's a perfect place for families but the banality of it can wear on you sometimes. There is this sort of quiet desperation in the suburbs. Wives with monogramed tote bags and SUVs who are annoyed with their husbands for not helping enough around the house. Husbands with grills, that spend their Sundays watching football, who complain about their wives not giving it up enough. Bless us all.

I try to do things to keep myself entertained. Sometimes I'll just put on a fancy dress and dance in my living room, or say the f-word when I'm not supposed to, or try to convince my husband to park the car in some wooded area and make out with me. When the kids were young - we'd blow bubbles, walk barefoot in the grass, play in the rain, and make so many wonderful messes. It used to drive my husband crazy. He came home once to my kids covered in pudding paint. "They are just leaning and tapping into their creative side," I told him. I want to eat curry in India, and hike to waterfalls and feel the sun on my face. Being alive is so wonderful. I do try to FEEL alive, even if I'm a little weird and ridiculous in the process. I try to balance my free spirit and suburban mom side of myself and most of the time they co-exist just fine.

A few months ago, I was laying in bed with my husband and we were laughing about something. He laid his head on my shoulder and said, "I could never be married to someone logical," he said. I wasn't offended. I understood what he was trying to say. I smiled at him. "Well, thank you."

Gymnastics Girl

                                              
The gymnastic competition season is officially over for my kid! Yay! I LOVE watching my child compete but it sure can be stressful. She had a good season this year, over all. She got to stand on the podium a lot which made her happy. It has not been easy. It has been a long road.

I like to post my daughter's accomplishments and often friends and family will see pictures of her at awards, with medals around her neck and videos of her competitions. There is so much to the sport that isn't seen and isn't shared.

Gymnastics is not an easy sport. It LOOKS easy but it takes a huge amount of time and commitment. It is getting harder. She just competed her last compulsory level. Basically, in the Junior Olympic program Levels 1-5 are compulsory where ALL the gymnasts perform the same routines at all the events. Levels 6-10 are optionals where each level has certain skills the gymnast needs to master but they perform their own routines. The skills are a lot harder. College gymnasts compete consistently well at Level 10. Gymnasts beyond level 10 are Elite - these are your Olympic gymnasts.

Next year, my daughter will compete Level 7. She has all of her Level 7 skills already except for bars. Bars are her actual kryptonite - she hates them. She is really excited to compete optionals. She gets to pick her own floor music - she's going to do the Game of Thrones theme. I can't wait to watch her.

It's been interesting to watch her do gymnastics the past 5 years. You notice that as the girls go up in levels, there are fewer and fewer gymnasts. The time commitment and the skill level increases with each level - as does the risk of injury. She is in the gym 4 days a week now, for 3-4 hours and this will increase to 5 days a week at the optional level.

The skills are much harder. They do back handsprings on the beam, difficult tumbling passes, they do tucks off the beam, handstands on the bar,  giants.
                         
                                 
In a lot of ways, gymnastics is as much as a mental sport as a physical sport. The amount of mental toughness it requires and the ability to overcome fear is a HUGE part of the sport. It is scary to master some of these upper level skills - could you imagine flinging yourself backwards on a 6-inch wooden beam? No thank you. Where skills came easily before, they don't come so easily now. My daughter might need to be spotted HUNDREDS of times while learning a skill before she is able to do it on her own.

There are injuries. It's not uncommon for her to come home and ice an ankle or a knee. Many times she'll come home with bleeding, ripped open palms and I help wash them out, clip the skin and apply ointment. Sometimes she's really sore. Sometimes she is discouraged. These are the things that others do not see.

Last month, she was at practice and I got a phone call from her. She seemed totally calm, "Hey mom - I kind of had a bad fall. Can you come pick me up?"
"A bad fall? What happened?" I asked.
" Nothing, I just landed wrong on my head kind of. I'm fine," she reassured me.

Of course, I was freaked out and immediately headed over to the gym. As I was en route, my girlfriend called me and told me about it. She was there and saw it happen. She said it looked really bad and that she came down on her chest hard and then her head and neck. I ran into the gym. Ran. I needed to put my eyes and my hands on my child.

I walked into the gym and immediately exhaled when I saw her tumbling on the floor. She was okay. She half smiled when she saw me and walked over. She hugged me. "Are you okay? What hurts?" I asked. "Just my neck and chest. Really, I'm okay." I told her to go to the locker room and collect her things and her coach came over and we talked about when happened.

She came out of the locker room and we went to the car. On the way home, she cried. My child never cries. She is tough as nails and generally unemotional about things. She spoke about being discouraged about learning a new skill, that she was stressed out and tired. I did a lot of listening.
I told her, "Gymnastics is supposed to be fun. You love gymnastics, once it stops being fun, I don't want you to do it. The pressure you feel is coming from yourself. Not me and dad, not your coaches. You are 12. This is not the Olympics. You have plenty of time. If you push too hard and are stressed out, you will make mistakes and get hurt. Let's take a step back and focus on resting and feeling well."

She took 3 days off to nurse her neck. It was a little sore, so we did lots of ice and ibuprofen, then heat and massage and she felt a lot better. I texted her coaches and told them that she would only be in gym 2 times a week for the next few weeks. That I felt like taking some time was best for her physical and mental health. She has awesome coaches who were completely supportive and agreed. I love her coaches so much. She had a meet that week- but you know what? Oh well. It's not the Olympics, this is level 5 gymnastics. She went to gym twice that week. She rested, she spent time with the family, she re-charged, she iced her ankle that has been giving her trouble and she did awesome at her meet. She needed that. Then, she was back in her regular routine. The child was at the gym on New Years Eve.

I am very big on making sure she maintains some semblance of a normal life. There are not many kids who train 12-15 hours a week, year round. She does miss out on some things because she has gym but I always make sure she gets to participate in other activities and events as much as possible. She wanted to be in student council, so she is late to gym when she has meetings. If she wants to go to a dance, a birthday party, or the football game - I let her miss gym or switch days. If she has an injury or is exhausted, I pick her up early. Gymnastics is a big part of her life but it's not her WHOLE life. If she feels like she is missing out on other things, or if she becomes burned out, or if she tries to "train through" an injury - she will want to quit. I think trying to maintain some sort of balance has been vital.

I am proud of her all the time. I have sat and watched when she was first place on the podium and last place and I am proud. I remind her often that this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. You are going to be first sometimes, you are going to be last sometimes and sometimes you will be inbetween. All of those things are okay. Just do your best. I do not live vicariously through my children. Their accomplishments belong to them, their failures do too. I am here to encourage and support.

People sometimes joke to her that they want to see her in the Olympics and she laughs. She does not have Olympic aspirations. She's a little too old for that already. College is a possibility but I don't know if she will do gymnastics in college. College gymnastics is extremely difficult to get into and it can be BRUTAL. At this point in time, she says that she wants to do gymnastics through high school and then "retire" before college. I would be 100% okay with that. BUT I would hope that she maybe attends a college with a club team so that she still has the option to do gymnastics in a low-stress environment. She could even coach at a local club when she is in college which would be a great job in the evenings or Saturdays. I think she would enjoy that. It will be hard when gymnastics ends because it has been such a huge part of her life.

She has a LOT of time to figure things out and her plans might change and that's okay. I remind her of that all the time: you have options.

People think we are crazy. We have spent a lot of time and money on gymnastics. I drop her off and pick her up 4-5 days a week, we have spent a lot of time traveling and we sit for 3 hours to watch our daughter compete for 5 minutes. Gymnastics is more than a monthly car payment and during competition season, more than a luxury car payment. We sacrifice hugely. I may never see any financial benefit from it (unless she gets a scholarship, IF that is what SHE wants to pursue). I am okay with that because I still think it is money well spent. She loves gymnastics, she has made so many friends and close relationships, she has learned so many important lessons about patience, commitment, perseverance, dedication and friendship. We have so many memories of going to watch her, and the thrill of when her name comes up on the score board with a 9+, and the smile on her face when she is on the podium. Those things are priceless to us.

I am excited for her. I think her future is bright!