May 20, 2006
You HAVE to see this. . .
Love him or hate him, you have to admit that this is hysterical. He is one good sport, who definitely knows how to have some fun!
May 19, 2006
Five Things
I saw this over at Thinking About and thought I would give it a go.
In my fridge:
- Sprout bread. It sounds gross, I know. But my husband brought it home and it grew on me. It’s especially good as toast, with a little butter and cinnamon.
- Lots of containers of half eaten baby food.
- A teether toy or two.
- Diet Rite-I can’t live without it.
- Paul Newman Family Italian dressing-I can’t be without it either.
In my car:
- My bo and my tunfa weapons.
- Two strollers: one for rough terrain, one for shopping (neither of which Lil C will tolerate for more than five minutes).
- Two Shakira CD’s.
- A pen for writing down Litter Butts info.
- About four gazillion toys that have been thrown in a fit of giggles by Lil C.
In my purse:
- Entirely too many pictures of my kids. I still have pictures of Big I when she was a baby (and when I say pictures, I mean every single one she’s ever had taken since she was born).
- As if the pictures in the wallet weren’t enough, I also have two mini photo albums of my kids.
- A wallet with entirely too much junk in it, yet little or no money. My husband calls it a "Costanza" wallet. Ever see that Seinfeld episode?
- Tissues, because I finally got with it and decided to be a good Mom.
- Tweezers, because somehow the light outside in the car is always so much better than inside.
In my closet:
- A collection of bridesmaid dresses that I’m keeping around so my girls can play dress up.
- A ton of clothes that I don’t wear but have some sort of sentimental connection to for some odd reason, so in the closet they will stay.
- Some maternity clothes that I forgot to pack up with the rest of it.
- A ton of pointy-toed-backless heels in a wide variety of cool colors.
- Depending on the moment, possibly my daughter pretending to be a scary monster.
In my head:
- Why is it that we’ve called an end to Mommy Wars, no problem (thank goodness); but political name-calling is perfectly acceptable?
- Why can some completely incompetent people pop out kid after kid, but one of my best friends (who is a fabulous Mother) can’t seem to after 17 months of heart-breaking trying?
- How will I possibly keep my sanity while packing for vacation for not one, but two kids this year (one who requires an awful lot of extra equipment)?
- How annoying is it that EVERYWHERE you go there seem to be cliques: kindergarten orientation, neighborhoods, playgroups, even in the blogging world strangely enough?
- Pain, because I’ve had a headache on and off all week long which is making me feel especially grumpy and miserable, which probably explains all this other stuff in my head.
I won’t tag anyone for this one. If you want to, go for it. I’ve got too much of a headache to be an enforcer this week. Also, I don’t know who I’d tag since I already pulled my tag-a-famous-blogger stunt with smashing results. So, if you want to, go for it and let me know you did.
May 18, 2006
A Lesson in Restraint
In karate, everyone is always talking about control. [Mat] recently learned what happens when the person you are sparring with lacks control. His opponent also lacked decorum and respect. Lirian Fae has also found out about control, or the lack thereof, recently. Higher ranks are supposed to have control over their punches and kicks during sparring or bag work. In other words, you don’t have to knock someone on to the ground to prove you’re effective. The people who have the most control over their moves are the ones who know their distance and timing as well.
I’ve got a lesson for you in control. Tonight at karate class, we did bag work. We haven’t done bag work in a while because our classes have been pretty small. Tonight, our class was filled with little people. (I felt so old it wasn’t even funny.) The closest person in age to me? He’s in high school. Most of the students tonight were closer to Big I’s age then to mine. So, when we were told to get in pairs, I was hoping that Big I would want to pair up with someone more her size and rank. Not a chance. "I want to be your partner, o.k.? O.k.? O.k?" There were two brown belts in class, one green (me), one yellow and then five little white belts. I was hoping for some brown belt action, but it wasn’t to be. 
So, I held the bag for her first. We started with snap kicks. Instead of holding her fists up in front of her and using them to balance (I don’t expect her to actually move them around yet to block while kicking), she swings her arms up and down with each kick. Each kick ends up looking sort of like an out of control pendulum swinging up and maybe making contact with the bag before it goes crashing down to the floor usually along with the rest of her body. Tonight she made some decent contact with the bag; her kicking technique is another story. She does seem to take a special kind of joy in kicking Mommy though. That can be a little disturbing. So, after Big I gave Mommy (and her own butt) a beating, it was my turn.
After being in a bear of a mood all day long, I was hoping to be able to really nail the bag, maybe do some thrust kicks or something. With Big I, I’m lucky if she’ll hold the bag upright instead of sitting on it and pretending it’s a raft. (Yes, bo’s are ‘horsies’; bags are rafts. We’ll get there people, eventually).
When Big I holds the bag, it goes from her ankles to just under her chin. Instead of holding the handles on the sides of the bag like I do, she loops her one arm through the handles on the back of the bag. Instead of getting into a side ways nai hanchi or a front facing seisan stance for support, she usually teeters on her heels, grinning ear to ear and trying to just hold the bag up. Honestly, all I really hoped for is that she would just hold the bag still.
While partnering with her over the past year or so, I have snap kicked the bag right up into her chin on numerous occasions. This shouldn’t happen if you’re holding the bag correctly. Big I doesn’t seem to mind though. She usually cracks up, and stumbles around the dojo with the heavy bag, her arm firmly looped through the back handles. Sometimes, she thinks that when she has the heavy bag, it’s time for a good old-fashioned game of tag. It can get a little frustrating at times, but her laugh is so intoxicating and funny that it’s hard not to be at least a little bit amused.
So, Big I held the bag like she always does, stumbling around from side to side and back to front, forcing me to constantly reevaluate where I would place my kick and how far away I needed to be from her in order to not send her flying. Each kick, I grazed the bag, moving it enough to let her know I hit it, but not enough to throw her for a loop. I was frustrated in the beginning, but then I started looking at it as a learning experience. When, after all, will a sparring partner or a bad person on the street for that matter, stand still so I can kick them?
They won’t.
So, just as I was adjusting to the constant resetting for snap kicks, my instructor decided to change it up with round house kicks. When doing round house kicks with a partner, the partner turns sideways and holds the bag in front of them. You stand facing the opposite direction, draw you foot up, lean away from the kicking leg, and extend your leg out the side to make contact with the bag with the top of your foot.
Round house kicks are challenging. You must maintain good balance. You must land your kick and then place your foot back down and reset. I’ve found them to be the most challenging kick, even more so than the back or side kick. I didn’t realize how challenging they would be though, until I had a squirmy kid holding the bag who just didn’t get it. She kept turning and facing me, forcing me to kick the side of the bag, a rather small target of only a few inches, compared to the front of the bag. I had to constantly readjust my position in order to make contact with the bag. It was sort of like a karate merry-go-round.
If there is one thing that Big I just doesn’t get, it’s positioning. After working with the bags for a while, we were divided up into groups. The white and yellow belts went to work on some of the lower kata’s and the brown belt and I went to work on our material with our instructor. I stole a couple glances across the dojo at Big I and instead of facing the mirror while doing kata, she firmly plants herself directly in front of someone who is doing the kata. She does this sort of dance the entire time. My instructor just figured it out a few weeks ago. She learns best if you mirror her. You have to be facing her; standing beside her doesn’t work. I guess this could explain why her positioning with the bags is so off too. She just doesn’t see how the system is supposed to work yet. I have faith though, that eventually she will.
In another few weeks, I am going to start staying for the later class which is all brown belts, mostly ones who will be testing for black belt in the summer. I am hoping for some good bag work then where I can focus on my technique more than on crazy distancing (I’ll save those lessons for sparring.) In the meantime, I’ve got my heavy bag downstairs; and apparently learning better technique is going to have to be a solitary venture.
May 16, 2006
Bug off
The day after Big I’s third birthday, we discovered something horrible. Apparently, Big I had taken home a souvenir from our little walk through nature on the previous day. She woke up in the morning looking sickly and pale. She was complaining that her shoulder hurt. I lifted up her pajama top and gasped. There was a tick embedded in her shoulder. I picked her up and ran her up the stairs to my husband, grabbing the phone on the way so I could call my Mom who happens to be a nurse.
After talking with my Mom and with the nurse from the pediatrician’s office, my husband had a go with the tweezers at her poor little shoulder. She screamed in pain and that tick held onto her so tightly. It made me sick. I wished it would be me instead. There was nothing I could do except hold her and tell her it would be over soon. If only I had known how long the ordeal was going to be.
My husband finally pulled the tick out of her, but its head remained behind. The pediatrician told me to cover it with neosporin and a band aid. They said the head would work its way out as Big I’s body rejected it and pushed it out.
They were wrong.
Three days later, the shoulder was not looking any better and I could still see the tick’s head, firmly embedded in her shoulder. I took her to the doctor. I saw a new pediatrician at the office who said it was no big deal. She said I should keep doing what I was doing. So I did, for another two days.
Two days later, Big I woke up with redness and swelling in her arm. I took her back to the pediatrician. This time, we saw a different doctor, who said that Big I had a staph infection in her arm and that he was going to try to get the head out. He had to lance and drain the wound. She screamed; I held her and felt like screaming myself. He didn’t get the head out. They gave me a prescription for some strong antibiotics. After all of that trauma, he handed me a sheet for blood work. Blood WORK on a 3 year old! I really wanted to scream.
We took her for the blood work and she was so brave. She was fine until the needle punctured the skin, and then she screamed. The blood work came back normal. About two weeks later, she was scratching her arm and the tick head came out. Nasty. She still has a scar.
Until this week, Big I has been terrified of every bug. Ants on the sidewalk? Let’s play inside instead. Bee buzzing around some flowers? Scream and head for cover! Fly got in the house? Must kill fly now or else child will have a nervous breakdown. It has gotten to the point that my husband and I have been worried about the possibility of a bug-related obsessive compulsive disorder. Or, maybe she’s suffering from PTTD (post-traumatic tick disorder)?
And then Aunt E came out of the blue with a bug catcher. Over the weekend, my sister decided that Big I must get over her fear of bugs. So, they spent the afternoon searching for bugs in the yard. Together, they caught two worms, a salamander, and a spider. She proudly carried around her little bug cage and showed everyone her latest catches. After about an hour or so, she’d tell everyone to "Say goodbye to the ‘lizard’" and we would. She would then release her new friends back to the wild.
So, you can understand my amazement with what happened yesterday. Big I declared that there was a scary black spider approaching her toys. I was busy feeding Lil C and told her it would have to wait a minute or two. Instead of waiting and whining, which would have been the norm pre-bug catcher, she grabbed a tissue, one tissue, (not 14 like I would have,) and approached the black spider with confidence. She knelt down, opened that tissue and squished it good. She then brought it to me to show me her conquest. I have to say, I was pretty impressed.
I think we’re over the bug fear.
May 14, 2006
I do remember
The other night I was at my parent’s house; and we got on the subject of when I was growing up. I told my dad how I remembered this one night when he and I were watching TV together. He said, "You want some popcorn?" I was shocked that he asked me and was offering to get us both a snack. I said, "Sure! Sounds good." At this point in my relaying the story, my Mom interrupted and said, "See, you remember all these good things about your dad; but you and your sister probably don’t remember anything good about me." I told her that she didn’t let me finish the story. My dad responded to my affirmative answer with a, "Then get off your butt and go make some for us." (My dad is sometimes annoying like that.)
I then started thinking of all the good things about my Mom and was telling her a few of my best memories of growing up. . .
- Every Valentine’s Day, whether my sister and I had a boyfriend or not (usually not), my Mom would prepare a candlelight dinner for the whole family. She’d also make a cake with pink icing and give us each a present. Even if I had to endure an entire school day filled with girls squealing with excitement at the flowers or chocolates their boyfriend gave them, I knew I had a special dinner and gift coming when I got home from school.
- I remember when my high school boyfriend and I had a major fight. She spent what must have been hours just listening to me cry and giving me hugs while my dad stood in the doorway, shaking his head and probably imagining a baseball bat meets boyfriend scenario. My Mom knew the perfect things to say to me; my dad was always better at the violent imagery.
- In the summers, she would get up early and spend the morning cleaning and doing laundry and getting done whatever she needed to get done so that she could take us to the pool for the afternoon, even when she didn’t feel like going.
- She took me to buy a new outfit for each and every school dance from 7th grade on, so that I would feel special, even if all the boys were dancing with other girls.
- One time, my dad insisted I eat ALL my food from dinner and said that I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I was done. I ended up falling asleep at the table. My Mom woke me up and I went up to bed. She came up to my room a few minutes later with cookies and milk.
And I also thought of a couple of great memories of her from more recent months and years. . .
- When I gave birth to Big I, my Mom was there holding one leg and breathing along with me. She had a natural labor and I wanted the same; so her just being there served as such an inspiration.
- When Lil C was going through this projectile vomiting stage, my Mom jumped in the car and arrived at my house after one of the incidents so that she could help me clean up and calm down since my husband was traveling.
Though every Mother and daughter inevitably have at least one I-hate-your-boyfriend-so-get-rid-of-that-lousy-good-for-nothing. . . rough patch during the teenage years, I can now say that I consider my mom one of my very best friends. She always sends me these Mother’s Day cards about how proud she is of me, and what a joy it’s been to watch me become such a great Mom. I think it’s been pretty amazing watching her become an incredible grandmother. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom (if you can figure out how to get on the internet and find your way to my blog).
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