Writes for Kicks

When Riley started football this fall, his dad, who is helping coach the team, told me that practice starts at 5:30 but that we should get there ten minutes early because the boys throw the ball around before practice.  Seems like a good idea since our son only knows a couple of kids on the team and isn't big buddies with either one of them.

Monday we showed up for practice on the dot at 5:20 and no one was there.  My boyfriend, who I was talking to on the phone, asked if we were at the right place.  Then it hit me, my ex-husband had said something about practice being at another park this week. Riley confirmed it.  So without getting out of the car we headed back out toward the other park.  We walked all around, found two football teams and numerous soccer teams but not my son's football team.

Now it's 5:40. We tried calling a mom whose son is on the team (and whose number I have in my cell phone). No luck.  I would have called my Ex, but I knew he was at the hospital, with his new baby, and his phone was most likely turned off. So, as the clock ticked, we decided to head back to the first park and there the team was--right where they always are.  I walked Riley over as I knew he was a little apprehensive about being late.

I quickly explained what happened to the coach who was in the middle of practice and added for good measure, "Did you hear Mike is not coming tonight?  He and his wife just had a baby."

The coach looked a little confused and a conversation at the next practice confirmed that my ex apparently hadn't shared the fact that we were divorced.  I ensured that the coach had my e-mail address for any future communication that went out to parents.

The park and rec. department knows there is only one parent in my household. But the information doesn't always get filtered down to the coaches.  As a matter of fact, as a coach, I know it doesn't.  I'm always looking for it; and even as my son's soccer coach last season I didn't realize that a kid on our team had divorced parents.

I'm usually pretty good at letting coaches and teachers know right off the bat that we are divorced.  That way they can make sure and send e-mails to both of us.  When I went to a parent meeting at school the other night I put down both my e-mail address and my ex-husband's.  This keeps him in the loop as much as possible.  I encourage the teachers to please allow the children to make two of anything that is made for parents throughout the year, whenever possible, to avoid my kids being torn as to who to give that gift to.  I also ask them to make an extra copy of information coming home; because it is so much easier during hectic work weeks to pull out an extra copy of information rather than copy it myself.

I try to fill the teachers in on any major life changes for the kids to keep an eye out in case anything could affect them at school.  I told Miranda's first grade teacher that she just got a new baby sister a few days earlier. The teacher asked: "Oh, her dad and his wife?"  As tempting as it was to say, "no, I just got my pre-pregnancy body back quickly."  I just said yes and she thanked me for telling her.  Keeping the line of communication open is always a good idea.

I love that my kids are athletic.  I really do.  Athleticism is one of the things that binds us as a family.  We all play soccer, or at least we all used to.  (Read on to hear more.)  We all took tennis lessons through the park and recreation department this summer and enjoyed them.  This summer we've been biking and swimming; the latest thing we've been doing is having swim races.  We need to give Miranda a head-start but Riley is becoming a really strong swimmer already.

The only problem with having athletic kids these days is all the elite teams that are having tryouts for kids as young as 8-years-old.  Up until this year when he tried baseball, soccer had been the only team sport my son had participated in, so we had managed to avoid select teams.  But this past June, a bunch of his friends were trying out for the select soccer team and there weren't enough kids to field a rec. team for his age group. It was select--or nothing-- if he still wanted to play with his friends, which he did.

Long story short, he didn't make it--but all his friends did.  He was devastated.  So was I--as I had helped coach his team for the past four years and I knew he was good enough to make the team.  I won't bore you with all the details.  His response and coping mechanism was to stop playing soccer completely.  His exact words were: "I was good at soccer, but I'm not anymore."  He has now moved on to football; his first practice was today.  He is also going to try basketball this winter at school and continue with baseball in the spring.

In doing research for an article I wrote a while back, about coaching your child's team, I learned that the number one reason kids give for quitting a sport by age 12 is that "it is not fun anymore."  By pushing kids to get really serious about one sport when they are young, kids are robbed of the opportunity to pursue other sports they may enjoy or be good at.  Burnout is also a factor.  I was just talking to a neighbor today who is a junior in high school.  She is not sure how much longer she will continue to play soccer anymore because she is getting burnt out.  This is a young woman who made varsity soccer as a freshman.

The really silly thing is that if you watch the tryouts, whether it be for soccer or baseball or whatever, I tend to think that other than a few outstanding kids--who obviously have natural talent--most of the other kids are all fairly similar in their skill sets, more or less.  For the vast majority of kids there is no way to know at age 9 or 10 who the superstars are.

As far as my son goes, I have tried to focus on the positives.  I am hoping that a year from now he will love baseball, football or basketball so much that we will be saying, "it is a good thing that you didn't make that select team or you never would have tried football or basketball." 

In the meantime, I am going to enjoy not giving up all our nights and weekends to practices and tournaments.  And I'll enjoy cheering from the sidelines as his dad helps coach his football and baseball teams.

Rather than set this story up I am just going to cut right to the chase.  My daughter, Miranda, threw-up in the middle of big cat country on Saturday morning.  More precisely she threw up smack dab in the middle of the Florence Mila Borchert building at the Milwaukee County Zoo. 

If you are one of the two parents who gave me some baby wipes to try and wipe up the mess I want to thank you again.

When you have a daughter like Miranda life can present you with some interesting challenges.  Miranda is funny, smart, athletic, outgoing, delightful and thoughtful.  She is also strong-willed, independent and at the age of six, going through a bit of an egocentric stage.  Quite normal, I'm sure.

The hard part is that when Miranda is tired or unhappy, she voices that by being loud and rather whiny lately.  She can cop a little attitude and pout and stomp with the best of them.  I've been working on curbing this behavior all summer.  Luckily my son, Riley, is in a delightful stage this summer so that helps.  And he is helping me try to help Miranda.

Anyway, a just normally upset Miranda is not much different than a sick Miranda.  And sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

So when she was voicing her opinion that WE SHOULD GO HOME RIGHT NOW.  I didn't realize the severity of the situation.  She had said that she had a tummy ache earlier in the morning, but she rated it really low on a scale of 1 - 5 and really wanted to go to the Zoo, so I didn't think too much of it.

After carrying her around a good chunk of the morning, I knew she definitely wasn't quite right.  I figured we'd just look at the big cats real quick and then head home.  It was about this time that my boyfriend said he would carry her for me, as my arms were killing me.  He picked her up and it was about five minutes later that people saw more than they bargained for...about five or six times.

I must say I was really impressed with my guy as he went off to find a zoo employee with chunks of throw-up all over the back of his shirt.  He even carried Miranda to the car for me.  He scored major points. 

Miranda felt loads better after that.  I, of course, was racked with guilt.  And grateful I hadn't gotten her that red slushie she had asked for.

I ran through the drive through at McDonald's yesterday for breakfast.  There was no milk in the house, no waffles, no yogurt.  We were even out of peanut butter.  Since I didn't think dry cereal or an apple would cut it for a nutritious breakfast I decided we'd just do the quick and easy thing and then go grocery shopping in the afternoon.

My son had the hotcakes and sausage.  I had an Egg McMuffin; and I ordered a fruit 'n yogurt parfait for my daughter.  At the last minute I threw in a cinnamon melts for my son because he was starving at this point.

We paid and pulled up to the next window to get our food.  I was handed their little mini shopping bag, which is the only thing the hotcakes and sausage fits in.  Then I was handed a bag with my Egg McMuffin.  Then I was handed a bag with the fruit 'n yogurt parfait.  And lastly, you guessed it--a bag with the cinnamon melts.  Four bags for four items.  All of which would have fit in the mini shopping bag.

With all the talk of "Going Green" in this country, it kind of kills me that this sort of waste goes on.  In the spirit of fairness I just went out to my car and grabbed one of the bags (three of which are now stowed in the pocket of my car door).  It says that it is made out of a "minimum of 40% post-consumer recycled paper."  So that's something. 

A while back I used to try and get my food without the bags.  The look that I would get when I would say "I don't need a bag with that" was usually one of confusion or incredulousness.  "Huh?" 

"Can you just give me the hamburger?" 

I think it is great that the employees are so well-trained and all, really.  But after a while I felt bad when I held the line up so much; and these days we don't go to McDonald's much so I kind of gave up on it.

Can you imagine the amount of trees that would be saved if every time you went to a fast-food restaurant and ordered an item they just handed you that wrapped taco, hamburger or personal-pan pizza and skipped the bag?

I understand if you are ordering a lot of items to-go then you may want a bag.

But when I am going through the drive-through rather than being asked if I want fries with that, I'd rather be asked "Do you want a bag with that?"