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Fool’s Dual

I learned a few weeks ago that Mr. P was planning to run a half-marathon in Gloucester as part of his heroic training to qualify for the Boston marathon (he needs to tun a 3 hour 10 minute marathon in May, gulp). I also learned that there was a 5K an hour before the half-marathon, so I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to run a race (and allow Mr. P to run a race) with optimal car-pooling and Little Boy supervision. A 5K! Since I’m training for the Vermont 100K, I hope I don’t sound elitist when I say that 5K is, like, a drop in the bucket to me at this point. But since my pace is turtle-like, I figured it would be a good opportunity to challenge myself, maybe set a 5K PR, and at the very least not go insane with jealousy watching the half-marathoners come in. I never expected this:

First Place! (Females 30-39)

Somehow I managed to finish 4th girl (out of a total field of 250), and 1st place females 30-39, at 22 minutes and 51 seconds — a scorching 7:21 pace for me, and 3 minutes faster than my old PR. Not bad for an ultrarunner who never does speed work!

But I wasn’t the only podium-placer in the household:

Mr. P finished 2nd for males 40-49 at a PR of 1 hour 33 minutes. As he came in to the finish line, I yelled customary encouraging things like “Go! You’ve got this!” coupled with “FASTER! Go FASTER!” because there were a few other males on his tale. Fellow spectators seemed amused by my encouraging nagging, but he pressed ahead decisively to the finish line.

Little Boy didn’t run today — except on the playground, like a little maniac. He won a helium-filled balloon.

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By Meredith – April 7, 2013

Ski: The Movie

I took some movies of Little Boy skiing during our last outing on Easter. They’re not too exciting unless you’re a Little Boy enthusiast. I had tried to add some music to heighten the excitement as well as cover up the annoying ski-on-slush noise, but that made the video file too big to upload and violated all sorts of copyright SOPA laws. So you’ll just have to hum Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” to yourself. I apologize for the camera work, it’s a bit Blair Witchy.

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By Meredith – April 6, 2013

Hopping Down the Ski Trail

Not many Easters when we can go from this…

…to this, two hours later:

After the euphoria of locating the Easter basket behind the television (not without a lot of coaching — he seemed to look everywhere but) we ate some of Mr. P’s improvised French toast and headed off to Wachusett Mountain. The air was warm, the wind was brazen, the sun was half-shrouded, the crowds were light, and the Little Boy was hardy. As you can see from the picture… Moguls. Nothing says “relaxed warm Spring skiing” like a willingness for a 4-year old to take on moguls. He earned that chocolate bunny!

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By Meredith – March 31, 2013

First Taste of Kindergarten

Yesterday night we attended the Kindergarten orientation at Little Boy’s future elementary school. It is a terrifically diverse school that is 40% minority and reports 30 different native languages among its attendees (maybe Little Boy will add Sidaamu Afoo to its rolls, although I doubt at this point he counts as a speaker) while being nestled within one of the best school districts in Massachusetts. We are excited about this school. We are so excited, we brought Little Boy to the orientation.

Of course, we knew we’d be the only people who would drag our kid along to the hour-long info session, so after a quick tour of the halls and the cafeteria, I took Little Boy outside to frolic on the playground in the prolonged but cool daylight. We romped alongside 4 older kids (ostensibly from the Middle East, I’d guess Afghanistan) and a friendly mother & toddler from Malaysia. Little Boy really liked his future playground and it presented some challenges that I expect he’ll soon master, like:

After the sun set and it started getting cold, Little Boy and I retired to the car, where we listened to the radio and watched a lone Asian teenager jump rope on the basketball court. I subjected him to a good portion of Beethoven’s Ninth (“It’s a song of joy, happiness, life!” I said. “It’s scary,” he countered) before finding agreeable UB40 on the New Wave station. After waiting 15 minutes in the car, I would have driven home and allowed Mr. P to walk the 1/3rd mile home, but he had run 9 miles right before the meeting and I feared for his physicality, so we toughed it out for another 15 minutes.

It is bittersweet to see Little Boy get older. I yearn for when he was little, innocent, cuddly, and dependent, yet I am so proud and so excited to see him get bigger. I wince when he refuses to hold my hand, yet I rejoice when he makes sophisticated postulations about the predatory tactics of octopus. Kindergarten looms… and me oh my, this kid is ready.

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By Meredith – March 28, 2013

Long Skis

So of course Little Boy is an Alpine-ski whiz, but how would he fare on long, skinny Nordic skis? This was a vexing curiosity for Mr. P and I, as we miss XC skiing dearly yet didn’t feel right sticking Little Boy in a pulk so we could indulge in our wintertime proclivities (nor do we, like, actually want to pull a pulk).

We headed to Weston Ski Track (not exactly the most idyllic XC ski location, but it’s close and boasts easy trails) and suited Little Boy up in a pair of rentals. Oh, such cute little boots! He fell four times in the first minute. We instructed him to bend his knees and lean forward, but his legs were locked and he kept sitting down on his butt. Gradually, he found his balance and rhythm, and managed to inch along.

But, still, lots of:

After 2 1/2 hours (minus an applesauce break), he became relatively proficient and even started to enjoy himself. Not with quite the exuberance of downhill skiing, but he did protest when we left. And he stopped falling so frequently. Not that he minded falling. Remembering my first perilous XC ski outings, I told Mr. P, “Better he falls when he’s young than when he’s old and already broken.”

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By Meredith – March 9, 2013

Nor’easter Surprise

Yeah, we knew snow was coming. Three to six inches, we heard… and at this point in winter, New Englanders are wicked jaded. No pre-storm hysteria, no preemptive school or office closings, everyone just kind of blew it off.

It snowed all day Thursday, but nothing stuck to the road or ground. Friday morning was a different picture. Snow was piling up on the roads and showed no signs of letting up. No school for Little Boy, which meant he was parked in front of coloring books and the television while Mr. P and I worked from home.

By Friday afternoon, we had about 15 inches of wet cement-like snow (“heart-attack snow,” they call it). We ventured outside for a solid 90 minutes of snow fun. Perfect for snowmen, but a bitch to shovel.

Carrot in Your Eye

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By Meredith – March 8, 2013

In Stitches

It was a warmish winter Wednesday morning. Snowstorm snow from the previous weekend still lined the roads and sidewalks; though it was slowly trickling away in the daytime warmth, the thawed snow froze overnight, creating patches of ice here and there.

Little Boy and I stepped outside at 7:30am. I was inwardly jubilant that we were actually leaving the house early, and not our usual 5-minutes-to-8 rush. That day, I had 5 meetings, 2 weeks worth of work, and a Grad school research paper to tackle. An extra 20 minutes was like a gift.

As I put our bags in the car, Little Boy lingered on the sidewalk. I didn’t really pay him much notice; so long as he wasn’t on the street, I figured he was okay.

And then, the scream.

What a scream. Blood-curdling. It quickly erupted into crying. I rushed around the car to find Little Boy sitting in a pile of snow. Speaking of blood… it was pouring out of his chin. It was all over his jacket. It was dripped in the snow.

It turned out Little Boy found a little patch of ice and decided to put snow on it. “I was playing,” he kept saying later. I’m guessing he was standing on the ice, bent over, and his little legs shot out from behind him and he fell chin-first into the sidewalk. Ouch.

Now, I’m no good around blood. I have a lifelong history of being squeamish and occasionally fainting when confronted with blood-oriented matter. But you would think that my love and concern for my beautiful son would trump my blood-triggered vasovagal syncope and allow me to calmly tend to him as he’s sitting on the sidewalk bleeding profusely from a half-inch gaping gash in his chin.

No. Didn’t remain calm.

I scooped him up in my arms, and ran inside and upstairs. I begged Little Boy to stop crying, but I was really begging him to be okay. I realized I left my phone in the car, so I ran back downstairs to get it. I started crying. I felt faint. I talked to the doctor’s office with my head between my legs.

Long story short: After failing to get Mr. P on his cell phone (he was chugging away on a treadmill), I drove Little Boy to the emergency room at Mount Auburn hospital in Cambridge. It’s the closest ER in proximity — about 4 miles — but I didn’t account for the fact it was rush hour and everyone in the world is trying to drive into Cambridge. We were stuck in gridlock for about 40 minutes. I’d inch the car forward 3 feet, turn around and tend to Little Boy, who was still bleeding a little. I started crying again.

Longer story short: After 3 hours in the ER, Little Boy emerged with 5 stitches, along with me and Mr. P, who had rushed over after he got my 3 frantic voicemails.

The guilt I feel, that this happened on “my watch,” is overwhelming. Logically I know it’s not my fault, it was an accident that could befall any 4 year-old boy. But, still. As I change the band-aid over his stitches, I wince knowing that he could have this scar under his chin for the rest of his life.

I’m sorry, Little Boy. I wish I had noticed you were playing on an ice patch and told you to get off, and you’d get all mad at me but we’d get in the car and drive away. I wish I could hold onto you and keep you safe all the time. But there’s some things not even Mommy can control, and that includes you growing up. At some point, I have to let you go and do dumb things like stand on ice patches and split your chin open. That’s part of growing up, and I accept that bad things may happen. I just hope that, next time, you don’t bleed as much. Especially all over Mommy’s hair. Love you, Little Boy.

Not a happy memory, but a memory all the same

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By Meredith – February 18, 2013

SNOW.

28 inches of Nor’easter blizzard snow is the official tally for our inner-ring Bostonian town, but I swear, the way the winds are, we ended up with at least 3 feet in our vicinity. Hey, I love snowy winters, but I like the snow to come a little bit at a time.

Same as how I love shoveling snow, but I like to shovel a little bit at a time. Not 3 feet, not when we have no convenient place to pile it. Lucky for us, our downstairs neighbor’s boyfriend has not one but two snowblowers, and he was willing to disregard the driving ban in order to blow us out. Still, some shoveling was required.

I guess this is cross-training

As for Little Boy, he was rather nonchalant about the whole snow event: how his school was closed Friday so we stayed home (ho-hum), how we couldn’t leave the house (whatever), how we woke up Saturday and suddenly there was THREE FEET of snow everywhere (huh?)

Actually, he was more scared than anything. “We’re trapped,” he kept saying. “We’re not going anywhere for a long time!” Eventually he saw that our car wouldn’t be buried forever and relaxed enough to let me pull him in the sled (we went to the playground to go sledding, but he could barely walk up the hill and complained bitterly about the cold wind, so we went home after a single hill run. After I pulled him a quarter-mile in his sled on my XC skis. More cross-training.)

Wow

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By Meredith – February 9, 2013

Wolf Like Me

At Little Boy’s preschool, “walking” is out, and “scrambling around animal-like on your hands and feet with your butt in the air” is in. I think Little Boy may have had a hand (and foot, and butt) in creating this trend; I observed at a birthday party last Saturday that no one in his class can do it with quite the skill and speed as he can.

Apparently it’s even cooler to couple the scrambling locomotion with animal noises (horses, lions, and in the video below, wolves.)

I wouldn’t recommend trying the scramble to anyone over 4 foot tall. It’s a little hard on the knees.

Though I worry about banged heads and broken fingers, I tolerate Little Boy doing it in the house. On freezing cold winter days, I even encourage the scramble because it torches a ton of Little Boy energy. Do it again, son. And again. I’ll make another video!

Video

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By Meredith – February 4, 2013

It’s Such a Good Feeling

When our weekly trips to the children’s library began, it didn’t take long for Little Boy to become very interested in the DVD rack. To keep him entirely focused on books (he gets enough digital stimulation!), I explained we couldn’t bring home any DVDs because they cost money to borrow. This wasn’t a lie, but Mommy ignorance: DVDs cost $1 to borrow at our old library and, since it’s the same system, I assumed it was the same policy. But then some time ago I noticed a French-language instructional DVD for kids, and when I took it to the checkout desk it turned out DVDs were free to borrow. So I now allow Little Boy to pick two movies a week (in addition to the stack of 20+ books that he rips through like pancakes).

Though thrilled with the DVDs, Little Boy is finding out a life truth: there are an infinite number of good books in this world, but a finite number of good movies. He now combs the DVD rack and rejects every offering, either because he’s already seen it or it doesn’t look appealing. So, because life is too short to spend watching a four-year old study 200 DVD covers, I make selections for him. This has caused disagreements at the library, but when we come home and watch the DVD he’s usually happy. Like, for some reason he didn’t want to borrow Aladdin and was furious with me for checking it out, but of course he loved it and was furious at me when we had to take it back. (It’s like I’m playing a game that I can never win.)

I think he has begun to trust my choices, but last Thursday he was vehemently opposed to the Mister Roger’s Neighborhood DVD I sneaked into the stack. For one thing, there were no cartoon characters on the cover. I pointed to the puppets, but he was adamant: “This is not for little kids!”

“Oh, it is,” I insisted. “When I was a little girl, I watched Mister Rogers all the time! I loved it! Come on, we’ll watch it together!”

“No…” he whined. “You’re going to watch it by yourself!” He was mad that I would waste his allotted TV time with Mister Rogers rather than, say, Garfield.

“Okay!” I said brightly, slipping in the DVD and sitting on the rug in front of the television. Little Boy busied himself with a toy, but the moment the twinkly music started up, he was beside me, mouth open.

He loved Mister Rogers. It was amazing. Or, maybe it’s not amazing. Maybe it’s something all kids instinctively love, even ones who are used to a more fast-paced media diet.

And even more amazing (or, again, not amazing), when the show was over and I said it was time to go to bed, he didn’t protest. He didn’t run around and insist it wasn’t time for bed, didn’t try to hide under the dining room table, didn’t fight me when we went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He complacently went along with me, very sweet and obliging. Unless he’s completely dead tired, which is usually only on the weekends, this never happens. He was under a Mister Rogers spell.

And, me too. Watching Mister Rogers was a good and timely reminder of how I should be talking to Little Boy with sincerity, warmth, and calmness, even when I’m tending to routine matters akin to putting on my shoes and feeding the fish. I’m so bogged down with work, school, 100K race training, and household chores that I forget to remind Little Boy just how special and wonderful he truly is. Mister Rogers taught me a lot when I was little, and now he’s teaching me again.

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By Meredith – January 27, 2013