Connor Started Kindergarten and the World Didn't End!

Okay, this is going to be a long and possibly nonsensical post. It has taken me a week to sort out my myriad of emotions and I think I can finally talk about something that I have been secretly dreading for a while now....Connor started kindergarten. As a general rule, I don't consider myself to be overly sentimental. I'm not a cryer and I can usually keep my emotions in check. At least I thought so. Having never sent a child into the scary world of public education, I had no idea how hard it would be!

Connor was ready. In fact, he was ready approximately 726 days ago. He has been thinking about, talking about and praying about school for pretty much as long as he could talk. Sometimes it is pretty obvious that people are born for certain things, for example I was born to become a ginormous fan of the Bravo channel. Connor was born for school. To my little boy, starting kindergarten was like coming home. While it was natural and easy for him, I was personally a nervous wreck. I could never fathom the depths of fear, uneasiness and worry that I felt sending my sweet, weird, old soul of a boy into the world. Combine that with the unpredictability of starting a new and totally different job and the loss of our comfortable routine and I was a mess. Seriously, I think I was about one more crying jag away from Matt crushing up sedatives and hiding them in my applesauce. It was such an odd mix of emotions because on one hand I could barely contain my excitement for C. After all, this was his dream! He got to go to school every day and learn in two languages! On the other, more sad hand, I was plagued with worry. What if no one wanted to be his friend because he is kind of weird. Or even worse, what if he acted like a know it all and all the kids thought he was a jerk. See what I mean?

None of this bothered Connor though, he spent the summer going about his back to school business like a pro. There was endless list making and starting around mid-July he began what Matt likes to refer to as the Connor Collection of Potential Scenarios. He likes to think through all potential experiences and make plans A-Z. This helps him feel prepared and therefore ahead of the game. These scenarios were then compiled into a master list for easy reference. (For those of you who judged me in the previous paragraph for calling out my own kid weird, I like to refer to this as Exhibit A.) He had potentials for all kinds of situations from the mundane to the extreme. After all, one cannot be too prepared. Can't get your belt unbuckled by yourself because it accidentally got glued shut? No problem, let me check the list. Ah, Solution C: It states you should always buckle only to the first hole, therefore enabling you to just pull your pants down in the restroom without any unfastening. Crisis averted. He really gets a kick out of list making although I think it might smack a little of OCD with a possible dash of neurosis. I only took one psychology course in college though, and it was a Friday afternoon class, so what the crap do I know. I did, however, watch a lot of Dr. Phil this summer, so I am keeping an eye on this particular situation.

So, back to the first day of school. It finally arrived! I woke up before dawn with a serious case of regrets. Why did I take a new job? Why did we put Connor in a program way across town? Life would have been so much easier if I had stayed put and brought Connor to school with me. Then I could have been in his business at a moments notice and we would have both been readily available for hand holding when either of us felt insecure. Matt was able to talk me off the ledge though, by reminding me that there is a plan for us and it isn't written on any list in Connor's drawer. My husband is so smart. And way less crazy. Our new kindergartner hopped out of bed, got dressed (with belt buckled to the first hole) and fixed his hair, "exactly like my daddy's."
He was ready. Matt got the privilege of taking him that first day. With my new job, it was going to be difficult to get away but more importantly it was really special for Matt and C to have that time together, so I said my goodbyes at home. Poor Matt, he left armed with a list of must take photos and the pressure of his wife's mental state weighing heavily on his shoulders, but I couldn't have done better myself. He even called and said in a whisper, "Ok, I have taken pictures of everything, including one of him breathing in and out. I'm pretty sure his teacher thinks I am creepy and wants me to leave. Can I?" He is so good!

Connor had put a mega amount of time selecting the perfect first day of school gift for his new teacher. Talk about a brown noser. First he really wanted to bring her some of his Gammie's homemade chocolate chip cookies. They are truly glorious, but I had to explain to him that as a teacher there is no way I would eat a homemade food gift on the first day of school until I determined how clean the kitchen is at home. That is new teacher 101. Next, he picked out two dozen roses. Good grief. We aren't proposing marriage to her! We just want her to like us, for crying out loud! He settled for a wildflower mix, some cool markers and a hand crafted card that ,of course, included a list. He was satisfied by that, not thrilled, but satisfied.

I couldn't wait for the day to be over so I could hear everything. I restrained myself from emailing his teacher for updates. I feel like I am walking a very fine line between normal parental concern and abusing the parent/teacher email system. Matt has limited me to one per week and absolutely zero between the hours of 11pm and 4 am because that is apparently when lunatics email. Or drunks. Whatever. So after the world's longest day my boy and I were finally reunited after school! He was so excited to tell me everything. He had an awesome day. He loved his teacher (who he says is beautiful), thinks his principal is hilarious (he pretty much is) and couldn't wait to go back the next day. YES! I was so relieved. He did however mention that he hadn't actually learned anything and that was a little disappointing. He visualized walking into the classroom, saying hello and starting in on two digit subtraction or something. I don't know, I don't understand how nerds think. I guess in the midst of all our preparation I forgot to mention that the first day of school is a weird one and lots of things have to happen, but it isn't a regular learning kind of day. I really can't believe I forgot that, because frankly I had been trying my hardest to crush some of his more outlandish dreams and help him focus on the reality of school. Before you think I am a creativity killer, let me just say that in one scenario his kindergarten class turned into a flash mob. No, he doesn't know the term flash mob, but after hearing him describe 22 five year olds spontaneously breaking into a semi-choreographed dance on the playground, I went ahead and drew that conclusion. Sometimes being his mother is very taxing. So anyway, after explaining to his parents that he hadn't really felt challenged academically on the first day he went on to describe his new plan. He decided to set a series of tasks to himself daily as his own personal homework. Fantastic. Task #1: Memorize the class rules. Task #2: Remember 4 names of classmates (and write them on a list). Task #3: Write his bus number and lunch number 20 times. Done, done and done. Luckily, the learning was on it's way and that has really soothed his restless brain.

So all oddness aside (and there is a lot of it to put aside) the first week of school has been fantastic. I am so proud of how easily he has adapted to school life and he loves his new school so much, it has already been immortalized in several lists. I am getting pretty used to the idea as well. I have managed to stumble through a few more hurdles, like the bus, and lived to tell the tale. I still feel like there is a Connor shaped piece of my heart walking around speaking Spanglish and creating school uniform pattern charts, but I think I am getting a little more okay with it every day. As Connor told me that first morning before he walked out the door, "I just can't stop getting bigger mom. I have to start kindergarten because I am trying to get ready for college."

Yes, I guess you are.

A Walking Tra-Vest-Y

Oh the black vest. Where do I even begin. The black vest came into our lives innocently enough. It was part of a super adorable Christmas outfit. Connor looked so handsome and grown up wearing his red tie and black velvet vest. He picked that outfit out and just felt awesome in it. After the holidays ended, the tie and vest were retired to the back of the closet, but somehow that little vest kept showing up in the most random places. Matt and I came to the conclusion that our son had fallen in love with the vest.

The vest appeared anytime C felt like it was a special occasion. That could include a UPS delivery, a random visit from a friend or when his brother managed to actually pee in the potty. You know, the most special moments in the fabric of our family. The vest was automatically part of his stage costume whenever he and his brother decided to perform one of their shows featuring self written songs and elaborately choreographed dance numbers. What occasion could be fancier than that? You probably can't expect this out of most items of clothing, but that darn vest went with everything. It worked with t-shirts of sleeve both long and short. It also adorned t-ball uniforms and pajamas. And let's not forget the most unnatural of all vest pairings, black velvet vest and no shirt. I can't even type into words the classiness of that particular jersey shore combo.

So what's the problem? Matt and I try really hard as the parents of two ridiculously creative and sometimes pretty far out there kids to let them have some space to do their own thing. Even though my natural instinct was to steal the vest while he slept, set it on fire, then lie about it for the rest of my life (seriously, that would have been the most natural thing I had done all week). But obviously ripping the vest out of his life would be traumatic. We tried to reason with him that perhaps summer isn't really the most logical "season of vest". But he was so sincerely intent on impressing the general public with this vest and I could tell his heart was really in it. He felt so proud whenever he had that crazy vest on, it made me want to cry. So, back to the problem. We are now just mere weeks away from starting Kindergarten. I had to break the news earlier this month that his particular school wears uniforms. I might as well have murdered a puppy right in front of him. I never thought when we went through the process of testing and applying for kindergarten programs that standardized dress would have such a devastating impact on my weird kid. Out of all the kindergarten things I have worried about, and I have worried about a lot, this wasn't even on the list. The first words out of his mouth were, "But Mommy, I can't look like everyone else. That isn't me." Crap. After a minute of deep thinking on both our parts I then heard, "Oh my gosh. What about my vest?" Double crap. Now even though you and I know that even if he went to a school with free dress, there was no chance I was going to let the vest make an appearance at school. I think we have enough little eccentricities on our own without having to be "that kid with the vest" that others might be hesitant to make friends with. But he thought he was going to roll into that school with all the confidence in the world because he was wearing "his vest." As smart and tall and ready as my five year old seems to be, there is still a little guy who feels unsure hiding behind the vest.

So we have been slowly phasing out the vest. I think it might have been easier to get him off cigarettes. Connor, who loves to make lists more than he likes to breathe, has been hard at work on a list of occasions that would truly be appropriate for a vest. We are also working on a list of ways that he can show his awesomeness while still dressed like 600 other kids. This is hard for me, because I would have loved nothing more in elementary school than to blend in. But that isn't my sweet, slightly odd little boy. So we are working on it. Matt and I have talked about how that ridiculous vest is obviously part of all three of our journeys to get ready for the big wide world. It's funny the things that God uses to help us along the way. I can tell you that while my son was born ready for school, my heart hasn't been ready yet. But each day without the vest is getting us all a little closer.

Who knew black velvet was so versatile?

Super H turns 3!

Last week we celebrated Hud's third birthday. I cannot believe my baby is already three! We decided to have a superhero theme because, well, H is a superhero. In his mind, there is no doubt that he has superpowers and is destined to save the world. Or maybe destroy it. I thought when Hud was younger that he and his big brother were total opposites and that they didn't really have a lot in common. That is partially true, but their main commonality is really starting to stand out to their parents. Here is the bottom line: they are both weird. I mean that lovingly, but let's face it they totally are. They both live in a world where the unusual is the norm and I am proud to say that five and a half years into motherhood, I am pretty okay with this. While Connor is likely to costume himself, pack a suitcase and head to space in his bedroom, armed with lots of facts and hand drawn maps, Hudson is more into the constant battle of good versus evil. In an instant, anytime, anywhere, he can be drawn into a life or death duel with one of a myriad of "bad guys." It's weird.

Spiderman is his favorite hero. He has spent the entire summer introducing himself as Peter Parker. Some people get it, others don't and some just ignore the weirdness. He has built up quite the repertoire of alter egos. We can now distinctly tell when he is being Peter and when he has switched to Spiderman. With Peter there is a lot of faux picture taking and mild mannerness and of course, with Spiderman he is constantly shooting his webs. He has shot just about everyone in the city with his imaginary webs, including the mailman, the cleaning lady (who totally freaked when he chased her around the living room pointing his wrists at her while saying, chooo chooo) and every cashier we have encountered at a grocery store. You never can tell who is going to be a bad guy, he subscribes to the web first, ask questions later philosophy of superhero-ing. In case you are wondering how his transformation from Peter Parker to Spiderman takes place, I have included a video of him putting on his spider suit. He does this roughly 27 times a day. As soon as he gets out of his carseat, it comes on. If we stop to look at produce, he suits up. Before he jumps in the pool.......the reasons for needing an invisible spider suit are endless. I can never understand why said suit requires armpit length gloves, but he never forgets them.

Spiderman is just a favorite in his collection of heroes. He also spends quite a bit of time as Peter Pan (maybe we should have named him Peter). This one you have to be careful with because he will cast you as Captain James Hook (he always uses the full name and title) without alerting you, so you can be loading the dishwasher and then turn around to find a tiny boy climbing the counter to cut your hand off with a foam sword. After the amputation, while you are still stunned into silence because you didn't see it coming, he will sheath his sword in his underwear, put his hands on his hips and announce,"Ha ha Captain James Hook! I cut you hand off, bad man. Come on Wendy! Come on boys! I love you mommy." Aww, what I always pictured when I dreamed of being a mother :)

So life is busy here with a newly minted three year old. There is a lot of world to save and he can't rest until it's done. He is a sweet little boy, stubborn as a mule and possible suffering from some sort of Napolean complex. There is a lot of cape wearing, swaggering around and shouting orders to invisible people. Connor eats it up with a spoon. They are quite the team. Connor is the facts man, he has checked out just about every non fiction kids book from the library. Hudson is in charge of making it movie worthy. While brother makes a beeline for the book shelves, Hud hits up the movie section. Or as he calls them moobies (which when he gets really excited sounds like he is calling out joyfully for boobies. As in "I need new boobies Mommy!"). Needless to say we are well known in the public library. Obviously God knew Connor's heart and gave him baby brother with an imagination big enough to match his own. As a team they are equal parts amazing and terrifying.

We couldn't love anything more.

Since this is Hud's birthday post, I put in lots of pictures of the man, some new and some old. It does my heart good to see how far he's come. Enjoy! I am headed up to start a pirate boobie for my little boy :)

Matt's Ears Revisit Childhood and We All Pay the Price

This past week was chaotic. We were getting ready for Hud's big birthday, Matt was starting a new project at work that was ultra time consuming and Connor was just busy being himself. In the midst of all this, we had a minor medical crisis. Wednesday night, Matt woke up with screaming ear pain. I am not exaggerating when I say screaming either, so I assumed it was genuinely painful. Since it was the middle of the night and we had all been sound asleep, I was thrown into a tizzy of confusion. Connor can sleep through a hurricane, so he wasn't bothered, but it had the little man up and asking for breakfast. He requested eggs. Fantastic. Since this ear pain was so sudden and he wasn't having any other symptoms, I immediately diagnosed swimmers ear. Matt, who under the healthiest of circumstances questions my self-awarded medical degree, doubted my swift diagnosis. This was surprising since as a child he could never recall having swimmers ear while I could remember the pain so vividly, it might has well have been yesterday. I am obviously an expert, but whatever. I humored him since neither one of us had ever met an adult who had been afflicted with swimmers ear; and I took to google to gather evidence to convince him I was right.

Sure enough, his symptoms matched up with swimmers ear (and also a multitude of other ear problems) but since I wanted to be right and I was the only one not completely incapacitated by shooting ear pain, I presented the evidence and started on my home remedies with the help of one particularly tiny physicians assistant. There are an unbelievable amount of home remedies for swimmers ear out there on the internet ranging from the common to the freaky, so we started with common. Since I am such a well prepared mother, I had lots of the "ingredients" handy. Hud and I raided the kitchen and poured a whole bunch of junk in Matt's ear while he was curled up in a fetal position in bed. It was all quite sad, although Hud had the time of his life. He kept up a running commentary about being the doctor and what spiderman might do if he was sick. There was a lot of gentle petting of Matt's head and leaning over and talking directly into the afflicted ear so his daddy could hear him better. Matt wasn't really entertained by all the chit chat since he was having such intense ear pain, but I secretly thought it was adorable. We had reached the point in our ear ache science experiment when Hud suggested that he might cut off his Daddy's ear with his foam sword and Matt seriously considered taking him up on it. With that I decided to step up and make a trip to the 24 hour pharmacy.

Ah, the 24 hour pharmacy. I consider myself lucky that in 5 plus years of being a mother, I have never made a trip to this strange mecca of middle of the night weirdness. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I loaded up Hudson since Matt was not in any condition to care for him and whisked us off to find some kind of relief. Again, the excitement was almost too much for Hud to handle. This particular pharmacy is about 15 minutes away from our house in a neighborhood that might be considered "past it's prime". And I don't mean like Cher past it's prime, it's more like a Lindsey Lohan past it's prime. We turned into the parking lot and discovered the all night pharmacy is a hot spot of nighttime activity. There were a wide range of people in the parking lot, there for a wide variety of reasons, many of not them not necessarily pharmaceutical in nature. But I couldn't worry about that because I was a good wife on a mission. I scooped a pajama clad H out of his car seat and realized that in our haste that we had forgotten his shoes. No big deal because earlier in the evening he had gotten a hold of a sharpie and had markered all over his legs and feet. See, we were fitting in already.

I took my marker shoed child in and discovered an enormously long line of desperate and wild eyed people waiting to see the pharmacist. Feeling a little desperate and wild eyed myself, I decided to hit up the cashier for some advice because, after all, they have probably scanned every over the counter medicine in the joint. Marker Feet and I schlepped our way up to the cashier and I quickly explained our situation. "Hi, we are looking for swimmers ear treatment and/or ear numbing drops. Do you know where they would be located?" After he studied me for a very awkward feeling 45 seconds, he replied "For a boy or girl?" Automatically I said, "Boy. Wait. What? Does that matter?" He just shrugged his shoulders. Okaaaay. Hudson took advantage of the weird silence to pipe up in a semi-aggressive way, "I a boy. I no baby, I big big boy." Thanks for that update Hud, we definitely needed a dash more crazy in this conversation. Ignoring my highly offended child, I faced down the cashier's blank stare and decided that this future member of Mensa was probably just trying to mess with the deranged woman clutching the mouthy toddler and stormed off to try my luck going solo. The line for the pharmacist was still 10 people deep so H and I combed every stupid aisle of that place and didn't find those drops in any of the logical places. Since in my mind this was clearly an infant problem, I thought surely they would be in the baby aisle. Nope. Children's medication? Nope. Finally when I had reached the point of giving up I stumbled across them in the eyeglass section where Hud was trying on all the readers. Yes, in the eye glass section. I whooped out loud and started laughing hysterically. We headed to the checkout where I thrust our selection of drops in front of the spaced out cashier and shared with him what they were and where they were located so he could be informed whenever the next customer asked. I also felt the need to share that ears are not body parts that differentiate due to gender. He remained unimpressed. With a final dirty look from Hud, we took our sad sack of drops and left. We got home and frankly, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Good and more than a little haggard. We rushed upstairs to save the day and found Matt snoring away. Apparently all my home remedies worked (Lord knows which one since I did them all at once), and he was out like a light and pain free. My victorious return home wasn't even acknowledged by the patient. Oh well, Hudson and I know what we went through to get those drops and then we had another two hours to chat about it before I could get him back to sleep. We had to wait until he felt ready for a nap since he still believed it to be morning. I also spent some of that time googling the most effective ear plugs for a 30 year old man to wear while he swims. I'm sure the sexiness will overwhelm me, considering that he also prefers to swim in a full face mask to prevent water from going up his nose (but that is probably a blog post in itself).

Sorry ladies, he, and his baby ears, are taken.

I so awesome mom!

Last week we finished up our two week sentence of swim lessons. It felt like two years. My boys absolutely love to swim, I am shocked that they don't have gills. The problem is that Connor is an excellent five year old swimmer, Hudson is a two year old non-swimmer who doesn't realize it. In his mind he is the most fantastic swimmer of all time and who cares if he doesn't have any actual swimming skills. This is stressful for me. I tried to give the swim teacher a heads up before we started. She has been Connor's teacher for three years, but I wanted to make sure she was clear that I was not bringing Connor Jr. to lessons this summer. I tried to be very open and honest about Hudson's attention span, energy level and complete and total absence of fear. She thought I was exagerrating.

The first day went okay. The policy in these lessons is the you have an assigned spot in the shallow end and when it is not your turn with the teacher, you must stay hanging on to the wall in your assigned spot. Problem number one. The four other students were all tall enough to touch in the shallow end and therefore had no trouble staying in their spot. Enter Hudson, the world's tiniest 35 month old. He, with the tiny t-rex arms, was not able to muscle up enough strength to hang on to the side for two consecutive minutes. The teacher's solution was to have him sit on the side until it was his turn again. This led to all kinds of confusion. Although the wait for his turn was literally two minutes, as soon as his rear plopped onto the side, he thought he was finished for the day and started calling for his towel wench to bring him his batman towel. "Mommy, I done. I need towel please." "No, you aren't done yet, it is almost your turn again." "Mommy, I need towel. Dry off. I DONE!" and on and on. All in all not a bad first day. We spent that first evening going over the procedures so tomorrow he might understand it better.

The next few days were a blur, he caught on to the waiting your turn process but then became obsessed with catching up with the big kids. She would set him on the side and he would immediately decide he could wait in the pool, hanging onto the side like everyone else......and he could do it by himself. Thus began the revolving door of sliding into the pool and climbing out of the pool during swim lessons. He would cling to the side for as long as he had the strength and then oh so painfully drag himself back out to sit. He almost lost a nipple on several occasions from all the concrete on skin friction.

So on to the actual swimming. He is a natural. He had a great kick, and could move his arms like a tiny Michael Phelps. What he could not do, however, is shut his dang mouth. He would jump into the teacher's arms, start kicking like crazy and then talk her head off. It was like his own personal floating party line. She would say, "Put your face in Hudson" and he would go under, mouth wide open, then break the surface spitting out a stream of water that would put the fountains at Caesars Palace to shame. He rarely swallowed the water, he just held it until he could spout it out like a whale. It was frustrating to say the least. The next problem was the constant chatter. She would be pulling him around the pool, practicing his kicks and instead of putting his face in, he would be peppering her with questions. "What's that?" That's my swim suit. "Oh. What's that?" That is still my swimsuit. "You see bird?" Yes I saw that bird. Can you put your face in? "Ok, I do it." Then my personal favorite part of lessons. When his turn was over he would climb out of the pool, raise his fists in the air and yell,"I did it Mom! I so awesome! I svim awesome!" By the way, Hudson pronounces all variations of the word swim like he is fresh from the mother land. Oh and to add one more element to Hudson's turn, Connor always felt like it was his brotherly duty to scream out encouragement from the wall. Hudson ate it up with a spoon. So now we had Connor on the sidelines, "Hudson! You're doing it! You are so awesome! You're swimming! Yes!" Then Hudson screaming back, "I do it! I svim so awesome!" At one point, the kid stationed next to Connor put his hands over his ears to drown out the annoying brother love. They looked like lunatics.

Last but not least in the daily swim lesson was free time. Free time lasts exactly 180 seconds. This was torture for Hudson on the first day because all the other kids could jump, dive and play with a myriad of pool toys while he could not do anything without his personal toddler carrier. Hanging out with the teacher wasn't nearly as much fun as going for dive sticks unassisted. So he came up with plan B after a few days of observing all the fun he couldn't have. As soon as the teacher started reaching for her watch, the signal that free time was approaching, he hoisted himself out of the pool (with no regard to personal nipple safety) and raced over to the toys and snatched up all the dive sticks. Now he was in the position of power. He towered over all the other kids on the side of the pool and taunted them by waving the sticks around while they begged for him to throw them in. Every once in a while he would toss one in and they would dogpile it while he laughed like a mad man. I think he has a bad case of the little man syndrome, with the way he swaggered around that pool in his size 18 month bathing suit, holding 9 sticks behind his back. Did he eventually toss them all in, yes. But only when he was good and ready and that was usually about the time that she had herded all the kids out of the pool because time was up. Yeah, I know.

So, bottom line. Can Hudson swim? No. Does he still think he can swim. Absolutely.

The Rad News Bears

Connor loved seeing Daddy waiting at home plate!

We just wrapped up one awesome season of t-ball. It was our first and it was a doozy. It wasn't what I would call a winning season, at least not in the traditional sense. As in we won exactly zero games. We did however tie two games and that was as sweet a victory as an actual win. Surprisingly, this was hard for me, I myself was never into sports so this mom of two boys gig has me experiencing a lot of firsts.

Matt was the head coach and he was so excited to lead this team of boys and teach them the fundamentals of baseball. It was kind of an uphill climb. First of all, we were a team of five and six year olds. This is an age group that is not known for long attention spans. We were also a team that was almost entirely made up of boys that had never played before. Matt expected this. What we did not expect, was that we would be going up against the Texas Rangers of little league all season long. Seriously, these kids were t-ball machines and we were administered beating after beating. Did we improve every single week, oh my gosh yes. By leaps and bounds. But when you are up against ginormous kids making major league plays, our progress wasn't as showcased as I would have liked. We were the new kids on a very grown up block and we definitely had to pay our dues. Here is the thing, Matt has baseball running through his veins. He was used to being a great player on winning teams throughout his baseball career. I thought this would be hard on him. He is a really competitive guy and I just knew that having a brand new team full of brand new players would eventually start to frustrate him. Nope, he was so darn Zen about the whole thing, it started to drive me crazy! In actuality, it was way harder on me! I wanted to win. Not only did I want to win, I wanted to beat someone bad, not just by one or two runs, but by at least twenty (my competitive self is also very immature). The more competitive I felt, the more calm and rational Matt became. Ughh. He ever so sweetly asked me to please stop coaching from the sidelines (yes, I became that woman). Not only could I not keep my mouth shut, but I had no actual baseball knowledge to back it up! (If you have read this blog in the past, you probably already know that Matt often ranks my number one skill as smack talking with nothing to back it up.) I took personal offense to all kind of calls, all of which were completely and totally justified. After every game, Matt would have to explain all kinds of things to me and after all the explanations, I was never in the right. I hate that. I mean, who knew that baseball had so many complex rules. Not me.

As the season progressed, the boys really seemed to be having a great time and I know for a fact that Connor never knew the score of any of the games. Oh, but I did and it secretly burned me up. Matt also banned me from talking to the player I gave birth to, when he caught me in the dugout before a game advising said player, "to go out there and bust some heads." Thus began my dugout suspension. During our "discussion" of that incident Coach Matt accused me of undoing all his "good work." Fair enough. I then started to relay my advice to Connor telepathically using my eyes.

This might be a good time to mention the fact that I was also team mom. Stop laughing. Let me tell you, I took to that job like a duck to water. I bought myself a sparkly baseball mom hat and stole a clipboard from school and was ready to go. My team mom duties primarily focused on sending out email updates to the team and getting people to sign up for stuff. I had everyone sign up to bring game snacks and then about two games into the season, I lost that list. Naturally. I then had to wing it and try to pull snack assignments from my elephant like memory. By the way though, as I was cleaning out my filing cabinets at the end of the school year I did find that stupid list filed under the letter R in my cabinet. Considering our team name was the Texans, I like to think that was my subconscious filing it under R for Ridiculous. As in, it's ridiculous that people put me in charge of things.

Here is the truth, we had a good little team. Those boys made unbelievable progress in three months and they had enough heart to outplay any team we came across. I absolutely loved watching these games, even if the mental score I was keeping was not exactly how I would have liked it to play out. I loved watching my husband coach those boys, especially our own son. He was infinitely more patient and fair than I ever would have been as he is clearly the more mature person in our relationship. He works tons of hours at his "real job" and then spent as many more as necessary to plan for, practice and coach our team. He did awesome. He really worked hard teaching the boys the right way to play the game and focused on teaching them the fundamentals in a way that I know will made them better players. Every day Connor waits, glove in hand to go outside with his dad as soon as he gets home from work and every day his dad takes him. I love that Matt is teaching our son about hard work and dedication and sharing a love for the game that he has loved his whole life. I'm not sure what I am teaching him through my team mom example, but I am sure it is something equally profound and important.

In case you think we are down and out, don't worry. The Texans will be back for fall ball and we will no longer be the new kids on the block. That's right, we will be rolling with some experience and frankly I am hoping to enlist a bunch of kindergartners that have been pumping iron in the off season. I have learned from our first season though and I will be on the lookout for that brand new team next time around. I am going to seek out that woman in the sparkly baseball hat holding the clipboard and I am going to hug her and let her know that they too can survive the first season of little league. Then I am going to walk away and hope with all my might that our team beats the pants off their team in order to satisfy my blood lust for winning. That seems normal, right?

The Closet of Doom, or how my family handles an emergency

This week we had some severe weather. Actually we have had a month of severe weather, but Tuesday night was a doozie. Just as the family was settling in for the night, we saw on the news reports of tornadoes everywhere. The lightning storm was unbelievable. Matt and I kept vigil in front of the tv, he for the weather and me hoping that the season finale of Glee would miraculously appear (it didn't) though at one point Matt did refer to me as "really hardcore" because he thought I was DVR-ing the weather. Suddenly we heard our city's tornado sirens. Crap. That meant it was time to hop into the rarely used (at least for this purpose) tornado closet. This is a closet located under our stair case, and it seems very safe. There is a slight problem with this emergency shelter. It also moonlights as my craft, random storage and hide things from Matt closet. I was not prepared for it to be exposed. Matt ran around looking for some candles while I burrowed out a space for the four of us to take cover.

Matt couldn't find a candle anywhere. This didn't surprise me since I have completely phased out candles in favor of the fantastic wickless Scentsy warmers. I am obsessed. Matt was so kind to point out that wax warmers that also produce a gentle soothing glow and depend on electricity for said glow aren't going to do jack crap when the electricity goes out (I felt like that was a little harsh on the scentsy) but he was lucky enough to find a weird triple wick candle we got as a wedding present that has not been lit once in almost 7 years of marriage. Matt acted like he had hit the lotto and headed to the closet, fully prepared to lose electricity. I, for one, was against lighting this candle and voiced this opinion against a backdrop of tornado sirens. I felt like it would somehow jinx our marital happiness to break the tradition of not-lighting this candle. Obviously it has been working for us so far, why mess with a good thing. But I was outvoted and in it went with us. Once we all got in there, we ran into a little more trouble. While Matt and I had our little wedding candle discussion in the living room, Hudson felt the need to completely disrobe in the emergency shelter. Connor was calmly assembling a puzzle that he found in my stash of junk while his brother was trying to use the winter coats to scale the walls completely nude. Yuck. Once we had wedged ourselves in amongst the craft paraphernalia, Matt set the candle and lighters on the floor so they would be at the ready, the moment the power went out. Hudson caught sight of the candle and lighter and gasping with delight, squealed, "It my birthday!" Then he proceeded to sing himself the birthday song, oh so sweetly. Come on, how sad. Like would ever force our youngest to celebrate his birthday trapped in a tiny closet with all the members of his immediate family, while in his literal birthday suit. We aren't that trashy.

Before Hud had even reached the end of his first verse of Happy Birthday, the closet light went out. Matt, the boy scout, declared a really mature, "I told you so" and reached down to light the sacred candle. Since I was at the bottom of the pile of bodies, and therefore closest to the floor (and by close, I literally mean my face was on the floor) I noticed through the crack under the door that the lights in the living room were still on. So how did we just lose power in the closet? Oh friends, I'll tell you how. It was Matt's stupid, but energy efficient light sensors! He is driving me nuts with those things. He has the darn timers set so low that you can't so much as take a slightly prolonged blink and you are plunged into darkness, forced to wave your arms over your head like an idiot to get the lights back on. How much money could we possibly be saving and is it worth my sanity? I think not. So black out crisis averted and candle still unlit. Whew. With our single bulb back to burning overhead, Matt felt like it would be an appropriate time to dissect the contents of my secret closet/emergency shelter. I felt that this was highly inappropriate, especially in front of the children. No woman wants to be called out on her stockpile of ribbon, yarn and beads (what in the world was I going to bead). But since we had nothing but hot, closely packed time on our hands, we got to have the pleasure of talking about my craft problem. And my scentsy problem. Matt was in the midst of a lecture on how unhelpful a truckload of poster paint and 10,000 A7 envelopes would be in a real emergency, when the sirens stopped.

Sweet relief we were free! We fell out of the closet like a bunch of drunks out of the back of a wino wagon and all went our separate ways for a little breathing room. Connor raced to find paper to draw what he thought a tornado would look like, Matt went to call his parents to check on them (he is like a saint) and Hudson split for the most important thing in his life....the fridge. By the time I caught up to him, he had bitten his way through the foil lids on three containers of yogurt and was downing them like shots. He acted like we had been in the closet for 10 months, not 10 minutes (did I mention that it had only been ten minutes). He is like two power bars and a five hour energy drink away from being dropped into the middle of a wilderness survival reality show. Before he finished his last yogurt, the giant hail came and brought with it more sirens. So back into the closet of doom we went. Now it felt even more crowded because no one wanted to sit next to Hudson because he was covered in yogurt and still naked. So the three of us huddled together in the corner while he had the run of the place. Not that it bothered him. He took a lick off his arm and started pulling down scarves to try on. Matt decided that he, being the man of the house, should probably wait for the dangerous weather in the living room where he could see it coming and then warn us. Oh, I don't think so buddy, I wasn't born yesterday. If anyone was going to leave that closet it was going to be me! I'll be darned if I am left to raise those two hooligans alone! Luckily in the midst of that "discussion" the sirens stopped and the weatherman seemed to sound the all clear for our area. Exhausted, sticky and extremely disgruntled we trudged off to hose off the children and put them in bed. I told Matt to wake me if there was any more impending danger, but to please remember that I have upgraded my own personal warning system from tornado siren to I better have a confirmed visual of a tornado on the ground (preferably on my actual street) before I jam myself back in that closet with any of the human beings I currently live with. He agreed but let me know that he had decided to leave that candle in the closet just in case so it would be ready at a moments notice. I kissed him goodnight and let him know that if we ever have a tornado closet experience like that one again, he could have custody of the stupid candle.....and the kids ;)