Life down here on earth

Just a little healthy competition

That loud *WHOOSH* sound you heard this weekend was me getting sucked into the world of competitive sports. Saturday was Jack's first swim meet and my very first time to have a child in a sporting competition. The swim team makes a point of focusing on your "personal best" and beating your previous times. That was all fine with me. I've just been happy that Jack was finally participating in a sport and that he was enjoying himself.

School is out and I thought life would be laidback. Instead, it's still busy but without the comforting routine of the school year. We've been busy every morning and doing swim team every afternoon. I'm tired. Jack's looking a little ragged around the edges, too.

Jack's first swim meet is on Saturday and I got roped into helping "shepherd" the 5-6 year old kids. That's a great word for it, don't you think? Shepherding. Not being familiar with swim meets, I actually have no idea what I will be expected to do, but I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction. We're supposed to be at the pool at 6:45 a.m. for the meet, which ought to be, I think, against the law. I am thankful that Jack is a morning person and usually up between 6 and 7, otherwise I'm sure it would not be pretty.

I have to say that Jack is doing well with swimming. They practice four kids to a lane and every time they had to swim the length of the pool, he passed the person in front of him- or ran into them- it's hard to steer when you're doing the backstroke.

You get what you get and you don't throw a fit

That's the new phrase around here these days.

Wah! I wanted the *green* popsicle! You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

Wah! I didn't get any Sylvesters in my Looney Toons fruit snacks! You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

Wah! I want a personal assistant who looks like Ewan McGregor. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

It works unbelievably well. It has fended off many a fit over miniscule matters. I'm convinced that the reason it works is that rhymes are fun to say. The kids smile when I say it. Usually, I say they first part (You get what you get...)and the kids will finish the sentence (and you don't throw a fit). It's so much fun to say (try it!), they completely forget what they were upset about. It's like magic!

I figure this is why O.J. got off. The jury was having so much fun with that little rhyme that they said, "Oh, just let him go." and spent the rest of the day dancing around in a conga line chanting "If the gloves don't fit, you must acquit."

Anyway, I'm building up quite a resume these days. I'm adding "persuasive rhyming" right underneath "Can cook an entire dinner using only my right arm", "Can tie shoes that do not come untied unless you want them to", "Knows 2 each of toothbrushing songs, bathtime songs and clean up songs.", and "Can magically remove owies with one kiss."

Just keep swimming

School is out on Friday and we don't have any big summer plans. No plans except for swimming, that is. This summer, we're swimming. A lot.

Jack is on the neighborhood swim team and they practice every day at 3:00pm. Every Day. Well, every day between Monday and Thursday. So four days a week for the whole summer, Sam and I will swim in the the one lane they leave open in the pool, while Jack and his teammates practice their strokes and starts.

Four days a week. That's a lot of swimming. Swim team lasts until two weeks before school starts in the fall. Also, for some ungodly reason, Jack and Sam have swim lessons twice a week all summer. Whose bright idea was that, I wonder?

So, anyway, if you need us, we'll be at the pool. Did I mention we'd be swimming?

Highlights

I've been sick the last week and slacking off. So let's go with abbreviated highlights of the week:

Jack had his first field trip last Friday to The Painted Pony Farm. He was so hot and tired when he got home that he didn't have much to tell me except that the bus ride was cool. The next day, the only information I got was that he "got to touch an udder!" It was a goat's udder, which is, according to Jack, "all dry and hairy."

Greg was hilarious on Sunday when Jack asked him what the "MHz" meant on the back of his remote control car. Greg explained (with hand motions) about how radio waves travel through the air in actual waves and how those waves move at different speeds called frequencies and how the measurement of those speeds is called hertz. Jack nodded his head as if he understood, even as Greg went into kilohertz and megahertz and gigahertz, but I thought I saw a glazed look in his eye.

At lunch, Sam told me "That banana is a crescent." I asked him where he learned that and he told me "from Blue." (he means Blue's Clues) And as if to make sure I knew he grasped the concept of shapes he pointed to the rest of the fruit in the fruit bowl: "The apple is a circle and the lemon is an oval. And my cracker with a bite out of it is a crescent, too." Next up: Dodecahedron

This Friday is the last day of school. Today, each child came home with the earthquake kit that had been kept at school for him in case of an emergency. The first thought that shot into my paranoid brain was, "But what if there's an earthquake between now and Friday?" Don't you think we're tempting fate a bit here?

Just hangin' out

Jack says to me, "I mostly don't play during recess anymore." I say, "Oh, really? So What do you do?" And Jack says, "I mostly just hang out."

So that's Jack. Way cool 6 year old, just chillin' on the kindergarten playground. He's hangin'. Chillin'. Maybe cruisin' for some hip kindergarten chicks. As long as they can tie their own shoes, because Jack sure as heck can't do that for them.

In ten years, when Jack's sporting a body full of piercings, black eyeliner and purple hair, and I hear, "We were just hanging out, Mom, really!" I know I'll have to start locking the liquor cabinet and cranking up the parental controls on the computer.

But for now, a little hanging out on the kindergarten playground probably isn't hurting anybody.