Top 10 Signs You Might Be At a Preschool Sporting Event

Any human who has ever sat through, watched, coached or even glanced at children aged five and under attempting the mechanics and self-control of organized sports knows one fundamental truth:

 It sure as heck ain't real sports, but it sure as heck is entertaining.

As I covertly giggled my way through my son's gymnastics class this past weekend, it occurred to me that, aside from that core truth, there are several things that are almost always happening when you get tiny humans together and force them to work collaboratively and reasonably.

This is, primarily, because tiny humans have no discernible reason and lack the ability to collaborate.

So, without further ado, here are the top ten signs you might be at a preschool sporting event:

10. Someone is in his mother's lap, sobbing as though he has actually had an appendage amputated. (The true grievance is likely snack related or because aforementioned child has been asked to do something. Anything, really. Breathe. Not hit someone. Actually participate. Parents can be very unreasonable at these events, you know.)

9. If there are any live animals within sight, there are a minimum of two children who have (a) noticed this fact, (b) diverted their attention and body away from the pursuit of sport and towards said animals and (c) may or may not actually now be in the process of being chased by an angry goose.

8. There is one kid who talks the entire time. Most of what he or she shares is completely irrelevant to soccer, basketball or gymastics, but instead is a steady stream of non-sequitors, anatomical or physiological inquiries, "did you know" questions or urgent interruptions that are, again, irrelevent but said with such earnestness that the coach can't help but answer.

7. A parent who is red-faced. Facial flushing caused by one of the following phenomena: anger at child who has attacked other child, anger at child who will not participate but who begged to come, anger at ancillary child on the sideline who won't sit still for older sibling "sport" participation and has sat on neighboring friend's child and/or deep, deep embarrassment due to all of the aforementioned situations happening simultaneously.

6. A parent on the sideline is unashamedly and loudly bribing his or her child to do something, anything, to show he or she gives a rip out on the field. One might hear "I'll give you a pony if you just KICK the ball" or "you're up to $1, keep running!" Judgment of said parent may or may not be happening by other sideline parents.

5. There are one or two coaches involved in what is going on. At any given moment, they have a look that suggests they thought signing up for coaching youth sports would be full of adorable moments during which their kids would overcome deep and profound struggles and they would receive hugs and accolades for their patient and courageous coaching of the tiny angels but in reality they have been kicked in the shins at least three times, that one kid won't stop talking, those other two kids are chasing geese again and little Susie just wants to carry her purple purse around and flinches anytime someone attempts to kick the ball in her direction.

4. Snack is provided at the end. We know this because most of the children ask on their way into the gym, several times while the sport is being played and immediately afterwards. There is always at least one kid who can't have the snack due to allergies so the parent who brought the snack apologizes but is secretly irritated that food allergies exist and the parent whose child has the allergy already anticipated the drama and brought a special celebratory snack for the excluded child.

3. There is at least one parent taking the whole thing way too seriously. Calm down, Derek. He's three. He doesn't need to learn to slide tackle yet.

2. One kid on the field has literally no idea what she is doing, but she will happily run back and forth with a big smile on her face, occasionally stopping to pick a dandelion, which she will excitedly give to the coach or her mother, upon which the coach or mother has to act delighted that she has been given a flower but is secretly wondering why the child thinks it is appropriate to pick flowers in the middle of rugby.

And the top sign you might be at a preschool sporting event is:

1. You are the coach. You don't know how you became the coach. You hadn't actually even heard of this sport until your spouse signed your child up. But here you are. In charge of 12-17 hyper-energetic tiny humans who now want to know how to play pickleball and whether or not pickles will be the actual snack at the end of pickleball. You consistently have to ask other parents what the rules are, you have no prior cat herding abilities, you kind of want to quit halfway through each practice but, at the end of the day, you stick with it because you like your kid enough that you don't want him telling his therapist some day that his mom stopped coaching him and he could never play pickleball again because of the emotional trauma of her sports abandonment when he was 4.

That Deeper Story

You don't always know it when you look at them.

They smile. They pick their kids up and cover them in hugs and kisses. They read them books before bed and help them build towers and tell them to dream dreams.

Most likely, they are exhausted.

If not from today, from yesterday or last week or from years and years and years.

From the 20th phone call this week with a teacher or a therapist or a doctor or someone from the insurance company.

From the long lists posted on their pin boards or kitchen cabinets or fridge. The lists of forbidden foods, of rigid schedules, of sensory diets and supplements. The food logs, the oils, the salts, the reminders to pull out the theri-putty or weighted blankets and to never, ever forget to go over tomorrow's schedule before bed.

From "divide and conquer" parenting that protects siblings from the chaos but can wreak havoc on a marriage.

They might look unflappable or they might have eyes welling up in tears.

And you might not know why. You might look at their children and not know there is anything different.

Or you might look and judge- why is that child screaming, don't his parents know how to discipline? Can't she act her age - spoiled brat. You don't always see the child, you don't always remember to believe there could be a deeper story. Everyone has one, though.

Don't you?

But what if you met that child's eyes and smiled. What if you squeezed that mama's hand or offered real words of encouragement to that exhausted dad?

No, not the empty kind. Not "you are a good mom" or "hey, it gets better."

Sometimes being called a good mom comes up empty. Who decides that definition, anyway? And to be honest? Who really knows if something will get better, easier, less intense?

No, say something real, for goodness sake.

"That seems so hard. I would love to help. What do you need right now?"

"Hey, I'm bringing dinner tomorrow night. What's that allergy list again?"

"It's ok to feel like this is impossible. I love you and you're not alone."

They might not have much energy to be a great friend right now or to even return phone calls. (In fact, sometimes the sound of those phone calls makes them cringe. Is the school calling? What now?)

They might be just hanging on by the skin of their teeth, fighting each day to give their kids the best of what they have left.

But fight they will. They are warriors. They see the deeper stories of their children and they won't give up. 

And their kids? Their kids are amazing.

They might not always look or act like yours do. But they are beautiful. Passionate. There are things that move them, that light them up. Sometimes their smile can totally change a room. Sometimes their screams can stop you in your tracks. But they are precious. Loved. Worth fighting for.

Next time you see one of them, take pause before you judge. Before you dismiss or assume. Before you cast words of shame upon them or their parents.

There's a story, there. And it's worth sticking around for. I promise.

A Very Potter Birthday

Some things in life are just obvious.

There was clearly no question of how we were going to celebrate our Harry Potter-loving child turning 11. We've know for a year that this year would be the year we had a Hogwarts party.

And friends, this is when the internet pays off. Yes, we came up with some ideas ourselves, but we also had a ton of fun looking through different ideas and getting ready together for this party.

So, without further ado, I present to you our Very Potter Birthday.

First, we sent out the invitations. Each one individualized, printed on parchment paper and sealed with a wax seal. (And big thanks to my friend, Kim, who happens to own a wax stamp with the letter "H", thereby making this a very cheap project.)

Next it was on to planning the day out. We knew we wanted to have the guests arrive in style.

Josh greeted them at the door and let them choose a fun name tag for the day. We printed out a lot of the major characters and added a little Hogwarts Crest in the corner. The kids loved choosing who they would be.

Next, I (as Professor McGonagall, of course), offered the kids a sweet treat from Honeyduke's Sweet Shop while they waited for other guests to arrive. Click here to find the recipe we used to make these Acid Pops.

Next we had fun bringing the kids through the front door which we had fashioned to look like Platform 9 3/4. I had a lot of fun with this one. Used a white sheet, a bunch of paint, a sponge and voila, which was an idea I got from this You Tube Video. As they walked in, we had the sountrack to the movies playing in the background to add a little ambiance.

After the kids came into the Wizarding World, I ushered them into our very own version of Ollivander's Wand Shop. I blindfolded each kid in turn and they were chosen by a wand, which they were allowed to keep as a party favor. They were pretty excited about this!

To make the wands (because goodness knows I was not about to buy 10 wands), I used this awesome tutorial. The kids were all pretty impressed and wanted to know how I had made them. And any project where I get to use my glue gun gets me pretty pumped.

Next we headed downstairs to let Oliver Wood tell us how to play Quidditch. We played the three minute scene from the first movie where he explains the game to Harry. Then we split the kids up into two teams, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. They got really into this and we had three awesome games of backyard Quidditch!

After Quidditch, the kids took a break and fed Scabbers. (Really, this is our guinea pig, Loretta, but I couldn't resist.)

Reading Clues on the Horcrux Hunt

Next, it was time for the Horcrux Hunt. This was something we came up with on our own. I wrote out two sets of six rhyming clues each and hid a locket and a ring. The kids raced each other as teams to see who could find their Horcrux first. Again, they loved this!

By now the kids were tired and hungry, so we settled down to eat in the Great Hall.

Josh and I came up with these floating candles. He covered empty paper towel rolls with white duct tape. I mod-podged it to make sure it stayed on. He cut little pieces of cardboard out and placed them just inside the tube, held tight with hot glue. We punched two holes and threaded white thread through and attached them to the ceiling. Then we turned on electric tea lights and rested them inside on the pieces of cardboard. It was a really neat effect. We then just scattered more electric tea lights around the room and lowered the lights. We put up the four House Crests on the window, which added a nice touch.

I also had fun making these authentic Butterbeers! I used this recipe and filled these bottles that I had covered with a free printable and mod podge. So easy and they loved it. I let them keep the bottles as another party favor. 

We followed the meal up with these fun Wizard Hat Cupcakes to round out the party. 

Though the best present in the world would be my ability to actually make Hogwarts a real place, we settled for this party and I think his smile says it all :)

His Dream Room

My oldest son loves 6 things.

His brothers, drums, legos, soccer, science and Star Wars.

So, a few years ago, when we were finally ready to admit that it was time to move on from the bedroom of his younger years, he started dreaming. He looked through google images, he went with me to find artwork, he picked out his own comforter. He let me create some art for him (to save us a bundle) and he even helped me with painting the room.

It was a truly delightful project.

We did most of it in Wisconsin so when we were moving I had to ask.

"Do we keep it the same? Do you want to change anything?"

"Mom, this time I want the drums in my room. And I'M going to unpack and put things where I want them."

Well, of course he did. So.

Without further ado, I'm sharing the fun room we enjoyed dreaming and implementing. We added in some new touches after we moved.

Here is what the room looked like when we bought the house (as per the listing picture):

Bedroom in Listing

And here is what it looks like now:

Because why wouldn't a storm trooper have drumsticks?

Science Corner

Brand new bed and art over it created by yours truly

Drums loaned by my amazing friend, Tiff and a dresser befitting a big kid

Needless to say, he's a happy kid!

When Persistence Pays

I am already 9.5 years into this whole mom thing and some days I still feel like I'm playing house. Dressing up little people, feeding them, pretending to impart some type of adult and lifelong wisdom they will no doubt quote when they are older as they remember me fondly as calm and collected all the time.

Ok, I barely got through the last half of that sentence, but still.

Am I the only one? I often wonder when I'll truly feel like an adult and with each milestone, I find myself wondering anew.

Except for this week. This week I knew I nailed this mom thing, this adult jam. Just for one brief, shining moment, I could almost hear the tournament music playing in the background as scenes of the last year and half with my toddler flashed across my mind.

This week, we got a diagnosis. After trips to therapists, meetings with the state agency, setting goals, sensory diets, parenting strategies, countless books, too many emails back and forth with the doctor to count, strict nutritional guidelines...after all these things, I still knew something wasn't right. That he wasn't responding the way he should to all we were doing if there were really no underlying causes. I knew it couldn't just be personality. No one is born miserable, right?

So I kept pushing. I kept looking. I asked questions. I found groups of people who had been through the same type of challenges who had found answers. I suggested possibilities to our amazing pediatrician who was more than willing to dig deep right beside us. I failed, I despaired, I hoped again, I tried again.

And, my friends, I performed the most disgusting ritual I have ever had to do, scooping poop from horrifying diapers into different vials, mixing and mashing them up with a scary little spoon with teeth and, I am not kidding you, putting the whole package in the mail to a distant lab. I am pretty sure the house smelled like a sewer for a solid 24 hours. Well, more than usual, anyway.

That sample was gone a whole month. Another month of inexplicable meltdowns, of anger and rage, of early rising and whining and a child who was clearly unhappy a lot of the time. There are few things harder than watching your child struggle and feeling helpless.

But this week, we got an answer. It may not be causing everything, but there is no doubt it is serious enough to mess with him pretty hard. I am pretty sure no matter what was going on in this little guy's body, he would still be off the charts energetic. I am sure we would still have tantrums and chaos more than I did with my first. He DOES have a "live life to the fullest" kind of personality and I love that about him. But maybe, just maybe, if we can heal up his little body, he can live life to the fullest with more smiles and fewer meltdowns. With more joy and less angst. With less thinking about how his body is uncomfortable and more diving into the fun around him. He is SO good at that.

This week, we won. This week, I felt like a real adult, a mom who fought for her son and succeeded.

Maybe you think it's cruel to rejoice in a diagnosis. But friends, when you have spent more than half your child's life searching for some way to help and someone tells you there IS a way to help now, you feel a tremendous sense of relief. It's not something incurable. It's not even uncomfortable to treat. He won't know the difference in his day until all of a sudden he will. He will feel good instead of crummy. The littlest things might no longer cause 45 minutes of screaming and throwing his body on the floor. Maybe our family will be able to go places. Maybe someday we can introduce some of the taboo foods back in and go to an actual restaurant occasionally or order in a pizza when I'm done with cooking.

We can hope so, at least.

And hope is something of a theme in my life. Through miscarriage, infertility, adoption and now the extreme challenges of a higher-needs child struggling through toddlerhood, God has continued to pour down hope. To give us just enough to try again. To explore, to fail and pick ourselves back up.

So, here's to the next phase of hope, one filled with treatments and, dare I say it, healing.

Sensory Mama Speaks Up

If you are a parent, chances are you've spent hours researching something. Maybe it was food triggers or daycares or schools or vaccines or whatever. Something caused you to pore over the internet looking for desperate answers.

For me, when my sweet baby turned 11 months and started throwing massive tantrums, I turned to sensory research. A few people suggested it after interacting with my son. It was something I knew a little bit about because of some friends with children who have sensory processing disorders, but really didn't know the details.

After reading up and talking to some friends and our doctor, it became obvious: this kid was spirited, but did not have anything sensory going on. At least not that we could figure out. So no help there.

But you know what did happen?

My husband turned to me and said "Sound familiar?"

Because it did. Painfully familiar. Not because of my children. Because of me.

Things I had always seen in myself and just thought were personality quirks. Hating for anyone to ever touch my face because even a little bit caused physical pain, not being able to handle repetitive loud noises, losing myself with too much noise and touch to the point of feeling like the only solution would be to curl up in a dark closet until it could all go away. Feeling like a failure that prayer couldn't keep me calm in the midst of parenting some days.

And you know what? What I thought was a lack of maternal instinct to handle the early years (and maybe still is on some level, I'm just not a baby person) might have been compounded by an actual physical problem with all the screaming and touching that comes with baby and toddlerhood.

And maybe, just maybe, there were actual solutions to feeling like my brain was going to explode halfway through the day.

I asked a good friend for a list and she shared some tips with me- some of them were things I could do IN THE MOMENT of feeling like it was all to much - these were things her son needed to calm down and if they work on kids, why not me? Not things I could do later when my husband got home, like read my books or go for a run or have quiet time to myself. But things, when in those deepest, darkest moments of feeling like I was going to snap and it was just all too much, things I could pull away and do. Or even do WITH a child still attached to me.

What is the list she sent?

- tight hugs/wraps
- deep massage 
- joint compressions
- therapeutic brushing
- impact
- weight bearing 
- heavy lifting

I have found for myself that the most effective way to keep my brain from going from overload to meltdown (and my meltdowns look like sad despair, not tantrums) are exercise, weight bearing and heavy lifting activities.  Please stay away from me with those hugs, though. Seriously. The last thing I was is someone to touch me with a compassionate look in his or her eyes when I am about to lose it. I will have to resist the urge to punch you.

And it turns out that when you have a ginormous toddler, it is tremendously easy to find weight bearing and exercise activities in the moment of chaos.

So yes, my neighbors, if they were to look out the window might see my toddler laying on my back while I do push-ups and loving every minute of it. Or see me using the monkey bars to do pull-ups  or chin-ups while he screams about something unknowable  - doing just enough that I can bring my mind back to sane and calmly deal with his meltdown since I've avoided my own - and honestly, half the time he stops freaking out when he sees me do them and just laughs and points at "mama up!" Or see us having races around the back yard (he already knows to kneel down for "on your mark, get set, go!" where I can sprint and sweat and feel instantly better.  Or doing burpees together, which he totally cannot do yet but seems to think are hilarious. My kid is incredibly physical and loves all this. We play hard and then we laugh hard. We fall down a lot, we get back up and we keep going. And man does that kid take good naps.

Incidentally, this is no small reason that I get questions all the time about how I've gotten my arms to be so toned and muscular, much more so than when I was younger and working out regularly.  "Parenting," I say. "Just parenting." Toddler workouts are no joke.

So even though the days are long around here, even though we are going on a full year since the tantrums started, even though it doesn't always work, I am thankful for such a beautiful fun-loving, son, for the willingness to keep learning about myself and make changes where I must to parent him better even as I attempt to take care of myself more fully than I did my first time around with this parenting thing.

And seriously, my deltoids? Things of beauty now. There's always a silver lining, friends.

Naptime Challenge Day 4 - Spouses

It's easy in this stage of life to just kind of coast along. To make sure the kids are fed and sleeping and healthy. To take turns driving one to soccer and the other to the library. To meet up some time after the dishes are done and everyone is snoring for a few minutes of collective yawning before bedtime. We can kind of lose our spouses a little in this kind of fray.

So today's naptime challenge?

Do ONE thing for your spouse. Plan his or her favorite meal or write a note if he, like mine, is very encouraged by words. Find a friend who might be willing to watch the kids tomorrow night surprise him with a date that YOU have planned. Buy her favorite candy at Target later when you're on a diaper run.

Whatever it is, spend at least 5 minutes thinking about this person you married and used to have so much time with. Don't think about what you wish he'd do for you but just five minutes of "how can I love my husband or wife in this moment?

Then go do it.

Boughs of Collies

We do a lot of singing around our house. And banging on pots, blowing into the recorder, strumming on guitars, tinkering on the piano...bottom line, it's a musical place to be. One of my favorite things about it is how often my son mistranslates the line of a song into something sweet, but not quite right.

Christmas brings a whole new genre of music to choose from in this area and at least once a day we're asked to participate in a sing-along. Tonight? "Can we sing "Boughs of Collies" please, Mommy?" For my husband, this immediately brings to mind a vision of festively decorated dogs standing in groups around the house. But, we plunge in, sing the song and move onto something else. Boy does my little man sing with gusto!

Of course, I think most of us can relate to having wrongly sung a line or two in our lives, and probably much later than as a three year old. I vividly remember the day I found out that Bush was NOT singing about a religious epiphany in their song "Come Down". I was not only convinced that the words were "I don't want to come back down from Islam," but I also sang them embarassingly loudly. Ahem, apparently it was "this cloud", not Islam. Oh well. I'm sure there were a few people who enjoyed a good laugh on the bus ride to school over it. Certainly my friends did when I finally figured it out, so it wasn't a total waste.

The thing I love is that when a song gets hold of you, it doesn't always matter if you get the words right and, as a three year old, I'm not sure he'd know what "boughs of holly" really are anyway. He sings it with abandon and without a care in the world as to what he sounds like or if he's "right." He's happily and unashamedly him. What a beautiful picture of living in freedom- just happy to be who God has made him to be and enjoying life each moment at a time. Another lesson straight from God through the mouth of a three-year-old to my soul.

So, as I continue to sing about "boughs of collies" and "drops of rain roses" in the coming days, I might just fish out my old Bush cd and sing along, wrong words and all. It was more fun the wrong way anyway!

It All Comes Back to George

Recently my son was standing stark naked in the middle of his bedroom and, pointing to his train engine, said what I thought to be "I have Josh engine nudie, Mommy." It's actually rare that I can't decipher something he says, so I asked him what he meant and he said, "You know, like George has monkey engine nudie?" Ohhh. Monkey ingenuity. Curious George. Got it. So, I gently said, "I think you mean ingenuity, sweetheart," and he, being the child he is, made me explain what that meant in the kind of speak a three year old would use. I'm still not sure he gets it, so if anyone knows how to helpfully put that word into simple meaning, let me know.

A lot of events in our house or our lives seem to come back to George. Should we build a sandcastle? Of course we should. George did. Should we go to the zoo and look for a baby panda? Duh, if George did it, it's on our to-do list. It's funny to me, though, how much I've actually learned from this sweet little show and from how much my son adores George. George is just unashamedly himself, he takes everything quite literally and approaches nearly everything, with the possible exception of cleaning his room, with abandon. Just like a 3 year old. My son has found his hero.

This devotion to George has a great upside for us- if George has done it, we can reference it and generally Josh will be on board. Lately, though, I'm watching the man in the yellow hat a little more intently and trying to learn some lessons in laughter and patience. George has, in turn, cost him hundreds of dollars over a miscommunicated donut order, totally trashed his house more than once and made it possible for him to wake up with a pig licking his face. His response? He laughed. I'm not so sure I would find it so funny to wake up to Mike the pig in my bed, so I've got to hand it to him. No matter what George does, no matter how much the man in the yellow hat is probably in his right to be totally angry, he sees the intent. He sees his innocent little heart and what George was trying to accomplish and so he usually rolls his eyes, laughs, gently explains to George where his plans went awry and then they clean up the mess together. Next day, new episode, new misadventures, more patience. All this, and still no one can see fit to give the poor guy a name.

I figure if he can keep it together when George has emptied every food container in his house and buried the contents in his yard, there isn't much I should react to before first finding out what my son was trying to do. 99% of the time, he has a very logical reason for whatever he's done and while I don't have a yellow hat, I might start wearing my hot pink, wide-brimmed straw hat more often just to take myself a little less seriously. If anything, it would at least make the neighbors laugh.

Mommy Come Home

When my son was first learning to put words into sentences, he very quickly learned a sentence that would cut me to the quick - "Mommy, come home!" Usually, I'd hear this over the phone when I was at work calling to say goodnight or on a trip somewhere. Sometimes it was even en route to coming home, but no matter what circumstances I was in, my heart broke a little. I began to question again, "Should I be working? Am I harming my child be being away from home? Is it selfish to be a working mom? Am I just a terrible parent?" All these insecurities would flow out and I'd instantly remember every single thing I'd done wrong in my parenting that week. Every selfish thought, every moment of impatience, every time I wasn't fully present with him even when I was home because of all the other things in life that were pressing down upon me to be accomplished.

Now my son can put much bigger sentences together and, in fact, talks a lot more than I do. He could probably put together a much more guilt-inducing plea if he wanted to but as he's grown in his verbal abilities, so has he grown in his understanding. I still don't think he likes it when I leave the house for any reason, but I can at least attempt to explain where I'm going. I can try to tell him why it's good for him to go to school and why I won't go with him, but still there's sometimes that look of betrayal and instantly again I hear his 18 month old voice in my head-"Mommy come home"- and I wonder if anything I'm doing is right.

As I wander through this sabbatical, one of the things I'm trying to let God deal with me on is my fear of motherhood. For a long time I didn't want to get married, to have kids, to settle down. I was not one of those girls who planned out my wedding at the age of 10 and knew exactly what dress I'd wear and what song I'd dance to with my dad. I wasn't really interested and didn't think I'd be missing much if I didn't have kids. I think sometimes because of all those years of indifference I now deal with insecurity thinking that since I didn't want this enough I'm probably not unselfish enough to do it well. I also let my mind wander into a place that thinks that since I'm not so good at this, maybe that's why God is witholding a second child from us. I know that's not how God works, but the lie creeps in. If I were a better mom, if I didn't work, if my son hadn't spent months asking me to come home...and I begin to wonder what I can do to manipulate God into letting me get pregnant. Messed up, right?

It all comes back to fear. Fear of failure, fear of not measuring up to...something, although what that something is still feels elusive. Fear that I'll royally screw up this precious life I've been given to raise and make decisions now that I'll regret when he's older. Yes, I've realized that some of the biggest craters in my battlefield have been caused by fear and that they can be so deep that I don't even know how to begin to pull myself out once the shelling has stopped. Though I often don't believe it, I'm thankful that God is a God who says not to fear and that He is trustworthy. That he reaches down from the edge of that crater and offers His hand as a stronghold. I'm hoping that as I slowly climb up He'll erase those insecurities and replace them with a confidence that can only come from being secure in Him. That I'll figure out who I am as a mom, without the use of any social measuring systems, without the comparison game, and learn to take this motherhood thing one day at a time.