My Jiro

My Jiro, so tough on the outside, so biscuity on the inside.

These past few weeks have been rough. I don't think I've seen him so emotional since before he started speech therapy and was only able to physically convey his feelings. Oh, his feelings!

So it's pretty simple. It's been a tough year. I think I've mentioned that both Satchel & Jiro's best friends left the school this year. In their class there are only 5 boys. Jiro usually hangs with Jordan, Will & David hang together, and Satchel is odd man out. Of course Satchel hangs with Jiro some, and from what Jiro tells me, he also hangs with Jordan. (Satchel has also started reading. A lot.)

To offset the lack of regularly hanging with boys their age, I signed them up for fall soccer and winter basketball. Soccer was great, and for the most part basketball is too.

BUT! Jiro's very best buddy, Q, is a year older than he is. So Q and Satchel are on one team and Santi (Q's little bro) and Jiro are on another. (We couldn't get them all on the same team, like in soccer.) Both teams practice at the exact same time and in the same place. No big deal, right?

Wrong!

Every time Q runs in the gym and joins his team, which happens to include Satchel, it's like he's put a knife through Jiro's heart. A couple of weeks ago...wait. If I tell you this, you can't say anything to Jiro. (He is very sensitive about me airing his dirty laundry!) Promise? Pinky swear? Ok...a couple of weeks ago after basketball practice, Jiro actually cried himself to sleep. Between sobs he said things like, "Satchel stole the best friend I ever had."

Oh my, it was so heartbreaking. It was no good trying to talk any sense into him. He just needed to get it out.

Now, in Satchel's defense, he hasn't "stolen" anyone. (As if that were possible.) Q has matured a bit and not having him in the same class seems to have made Satchel much more interested in actually hanging out with him. So while most of us view Satchel and Q's new found friendship/tolerance of each other as a positive thing, there is one of us who simply can't cope.

Since I am friends with Q's parents, I mentioned to his dad how sad Jiro was. Well word eventually got to Q. Q was shocked and genuinely surprised, as he still quite actively considered Jiro to be his best friend. Unfortunately, Q, being 8, said to Jiro, "I can't believe you cried yourself to sleep!"

Seriously, I'm surprised Jiro is even talking to me at all.

To help Jiro & Q bond, I suggested we have Q and Santi spend the night. Instead of being excited, Jiro burst into tears. "He'll just play with Satchel!" he cried. Oh my. "What if we also invite Theo?" I suggested. Theo is older and probably technically Satchel's best friend at this point. Theo also knows Q and Santi from school and basketball. This was an acceptable solution.

Then on the night of the sleepover, Theo got grounded. When I told Satchel and Jiro, they BOTH burst into tears.

Seriously, why even try?

After a lot of hysterics, I got them to suck it up and get on board with the sleepover. Q and Santi came over and everything went pretty well. Until Jiro lost his shit. And then it pretty much sucked. And then after a lot more hysterics, it was ok again. The next day after basketball we joined up with Theo and everyone hung out and had a great time. Then Jiro had some quality time with Q and Santi and I thought everything was cool again.

Nope.

Jiro is still just devastated. "Q hates me!" he says over and over and over. I don't know what to say or do to convince him that it's all in his head and the more he worries about it, the worse it gets. I mean, really. Who wants to play with the grumpy, sullen kid? No one.

To make matters worse, Jiro then decided that everyone on his team hated him. His evidence? They didn't pass him the ball. I go to every practice, and I can attest that this was a little bit true. BUT! Not because they hate him.

Last night before practice, I said, "If you want them to pass you the ball, get open. Use your voice. Say, 'I'm open!'"

And then lo and behold, he did it. And everyone passed him the ball! It was awesome!

So now I'm trying to figure out what to say to get him to stop being so sad about Q, who by the way has done nothing but request play dates and sleepovers for the past week. This morning I said, "If Q isn't playing with you, just go over and say, 'Hey, let's do this,' or 'Hey, let's do that.'" I told him that if he was busy playing with Satchel, he should say, "Hey, let me and Santi play too."

Easy, right?

I don't know if I convinced him.

I also said, "Stop being sad and start being awesome!" A little harder to visualize, but who knows...

Turns out he is also super stressed about a school report. Typically, he gets to work with Jordan on reports, but for the first time he has to do one alone. They've had several weeks to work on them, but I don't think he's started. I'm pretty sure in his mind he was thinking, "I just won't do it. So what."

Well, it turns out that the punishment for not doing the report is no recess. And for every day it is late, it has to be a page longer. So now Jiro is in total panic mode, even though he has over a week and his dad and I have both offered to help.

He just has no confidence. I hate it.

Over the weekend he was an all around mess. On top of his internal strife, he was also feeling a little sickly. I couldn't get him to cooperate or do anything. Finally he just erupted into tears and buried his face in my stomach. I sent Warren and Satchel to the park, and somehow managed to calm him down. Once calm, he said, "No one ever wants to do what I want to do." So I asked what that was, and soon the two of us spent a lovely afternoon playing board games. He was light and happy and just like I wished he could always be.

Maybe it's just tough being 7? Being the youngest? Being Satchel's younger brother? Having feelings?

I wish I knew. I wish I could fix it.

I just hope it gets better.

(Which by the way, is Satchel's de facto response, "Jiro, it gets better." And yes, he is laughing inside about Jiro not knowing he's talking about being gay. Sigh.)

Hats

At the kids' school the new must have fashion item is a special hand knit hat by Ms. Shannon, aka Penelope's mom.

I'm not sure who got the first hat or why, but steadily every elementary student has special ordered one. Satchel asked for Pikachu and Jiro asked for Latias last week. Over the weekend Ms. Shannon worked her magic and now I have two very happy fashionistos.



It's been cute to see them showing off their hats. They are seriously proud. So proud, you would have thought they knit them themselves!

Ms. Shannon has an Etsy shop, but she's been too busy with special orders to keep it stocked!

Updatey Like

Between the boys' basketball & Taekwondo, Warren's Kendo & Wing Chun, and my half marathon training (New Orleans--March 4th!) we are all very busy. And buff. Well 3 out of 4 of us. I hope to be buff after completing the Memphis in May Triathlon on May 20. (What! You heard me.)

We have managed to do a quite a few fun things between kicking ass and taking names. However, finding the time to blog about them has been hard. So here's a little summation.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Kathleen invited us to go see the Harlem Globetrotters at the FedEx Forum. (Her workplace had box seats up for grabs!) The monkeys and I were psyched.



I didn't realize that they actually pretended to play a whole game--I thought they just goofed off--but the kids were transfixed. (Kathleen, another mom, and I mostly hung out and chatted in the fancy livingroom section of the box.)

The cutest part was when they all ran down after the game to get autographs from the players. Satchel was very annoyed that I would not buy him a red, white, and blue basketball to have signed.



We also had our buddy Kai over for some video game action, offset by a little tree climbing.



Satchel is such a treehugger. I'm so proud.



Jiro has been going through a dress-up phase. (Finally! Satchel was a Power Ranger for months and months and months and I miss his flair.) Jiro's favorite thing to dress up as is "No Undie Boy." Apparently No Undie Boy likes to wear underwear on his head and a shirt for pants.



Here is another variation...



Cute, right? Maybe even a little French Revolution-y. I love it...except when he runs around with a Nerf gun wreaking havoc on everyone in his wake.

What else? Oh, I forced the monkeys to go to a classmate's skating party thinking it would be fun. It soon became clear that is was an ALL GIRL party. The monkeys were hilarious with their indignation. They did of course happily partake of ice cream and donuts before insisting that we LEAVE! NOW!



Jiro had a field trip to the library yesterday, but decided not to go at the last minute because no other boys were going. I explained that it was okay to be friends with girls and that I had plenty of friends who are boys. He looked at me and simply said, "Adults do whatever they want. You just don't understand what it is like to be a little boy."

Dang!

I should know since I'm pretty much surrounded by them all of the time. The long weekend was a rotating show of little boy faces in various settings.





Really, it should be no wonder that I'm ready to run out of the door when my Tuesday "Girls Night" rolls around!

But Warren and I did squeeze in some fun, adult activities too over the weekend. We went to a really fun 40th birthday party, and even got to see NTJ play at the Hi-Tone! I haven't been to a NTJ show in a decade, so it was a real treat. I even danced!



My old coach and friend, Nat, came to town and we got to skate the Greenline for the first time in months.

Warren has started building us a porch and had some nice stretches of time to work on it.

Life is good.

Basketball!

So I mentioned that the monkeys are playing basketball. It was more a case of me wanting them to play than them actually wanting to play, but mother knows best, right?

I wanted them to play so that it would be a few less hours staring at the TV or the iPod or whatever, and a few more hours running around. I also thought that the dark winter months would be a good time for them to have 2-3 built in play dates/face-time activities with their buddies. Most of their besties have moved to other schools, so basketball gives them a time to see each other and have fun.

They started practicing in November, and Satchel's team had two games in December before the holiday break. It was pretty clear to me from the get go that he could care less about the games--and has very little confidence/spunk at game time. However, he seems to enjoy practice enough to make up for the torture of having to run around rather clueless on the court.



His game on Saturday was actually quite exciting. His team looked really good and the score during the first half was very close. There was one point when his team was even ahead! We almost didn't know how to react!



Sadly things took a turn for the worse in the second half and they lost by a pretty big margin, but they seemed excited to have scored so many points and there was no doubt that they are improving.

Now, let's talk about my Jiro. When I look at him, I can't help seeing "Athletic Scholarship" written all over his forehead.



His boundless energy, natural agressive tendencies, and all around enthusiasm for anything involving his friends certainly serves him well in sports. He was tough as nails on the soccer field and he is anything but shy on the basketball court.



I had my doubts about a first & second grade team's game being anything but chaotic, but they really followed direction. They've been practicing a zone defense (and offense?) and I'll be damned if they didn't get out there and do just as they were taught.



I'm thinking Coach P has a great season in store for us.



(The first & second graders don't keep score, but us parents can't help ourselves... shhh.)

Satchel vs. Tree

On New Year's day, the three ninjas and I decided to go on a family hike. I really wanted to show them the Yellow Trail, but we were wooed by the Germantown Greenway. We'd never actually been there, so I was happy with Plan B.



Soon realizing that the Greenway connected to the Greenline, we made a beeline for the unpaved trail that followed the Wolf.



It was fun to explore a new trail. See? Fun.



We were about a mile in when Satchel decided to climb on a bridge and dangle from an old dead tree. It seemed a little unstable so he hollered for me to hurry up and take his picture. Before I could oblige him, one of the limbs snapped, and hit him square in the face. I watched in horror as he was flattened to the ground.

Luckily before I could panic, he jumped up and said, "I'm ok, I'm ok."

However, he said his tooth hurt and it was clear that it had been chipped. His upper lip was also badly scratched. All in all, I'd say that the injuries were minor. The tree was fairly hollow and light due to being dead so impact wasn't too bad.

Since he was calm, I snapped a picture of his tooth (bottom right front) and posted it on our dentist's Facebook wall.

Seriously. How 2012 is that?



She quickly responded and we worked out how to treat it and had an appointment to see her the next day. Of course we did all of this while hightailing it back to the car. Satchel's lip was swelling and I wanted him to be still for awhile. Luckily we had some ice in the car, and a cup for him to spit in. (It hurt to swallow because the enamel was stripped from the back of his tooth.)

Ice, ibuprofen, and Oragel had him feeling pretty good an hour later, but we decided to skip our New Year's Day parties and just take it easy. On Monday, I went to the dentist with him.

"Will it hurt?" he asked me.

"Probably, but I'm sure Dr. Rump will do everything she can to make it not hurt too much," I replied.

"If it's going to hurt, I just want her to pull it!" he exclaimed.

So yeah, he was amped up and scared. Dr. Rump gave him the option of numbing the tooth, but the idea of the shot scared him more than the scraping and buffing.



I let him squeeze my hand and I did my best to keep him calm. In about 20 minutes he was all fixed up. (She even fixed his top tooth which had been chipped as a toddler!)

Now that the boys are getting older, I suspect our emergency room visits for head stitching will regularly be supplemented with emergency dentist visits. At the very least there will be braces.

This tooth "emergency" was nothing compared to the one we experienced in Nola with my niece.

365 Fail

This time last year, I had lofty plans to do a 365 project involving a random act of kindness each day. By mid-January I amended my big plans and decided to do two small photography projects--one involving food and one involving the monkeys, but not at all related to Dining with Monkeys. Since I like taking pictures of my food (it helps when pitching stories and writing reviews) and my kids (they are just so cute!), I thought these projects would be super easy. As long as I was focused, they were. Problem is maintaining that focus.

At year's end, I managed only 152 pictures of the kids. Of course I probably took hundreds more, but I limited the project to pictures of just the two of them.



I did a little better in the food category. There are 305.



I think the pictures somewhat reflect my dedication to making "healthy choices" as much as possible, though it is clear that pizza, alcohol and sweets make several appearances.

Related to the healthy choices, I started a diet journal to track what I ate every single day. I actually did this almost every day. I didn't do it during our three week summer vacation or during the past two weeks, but basically every other day, which is pretty good.

I'd say my biggest victory in 2011 was kicking my Diet Coke habit. I only drank one a day, but even that much can be detrimental to one's health. I replaced the DC with La Croix sparkling water. It has no calories, no sugar, no carbs, no nothing--just bubbles. I love it. I may have the occasional DC at the movies when I fail to sneak in a La Croix (I have a stash in my car), but now it tastes sickly sweet.

I'm still pondering my 2012 resolutions and projects. This has gotten me thinking...

Family Photo Shoot

This is the third year in a row that our friend, Chip, has taken our family photos for our annual New Year's card. Warren and I had a hard time deciding where the setting should be, but finally agreed on Mud Island. I really wanted to get the city skyline in back of us. It was a pretty grey day, and I hadn't counted on it being so windy, but I just love how the pictures turned out.



Here's the full set. You can see that we spent a lot of time goofing off.




And here's how our card turned out. (tinyprints.com is awesome.)




Happy New Year!