Pushing Through

This mom gig is not for the faint of heart. With two kids a year and a half apart, the early years are a bit of a blur. I had two babies in diapers at the same time, two babies who didn't sleep through the night at the same time, two toddlers who desperately needed daily naps they refused to take at the same time. I felt like I didn't sit down or have an uninterrupted night's rest for about five years. Of course, there were a lot of touching moments, too. I vividly remember the first time my oldest daughter, unprompted, told me she loved me. The first time my little one dragged herself all the way across the carpet, sliding out of her pants in the process, to ask me for a hug with open arms, clenching and unclenching fists, and baby grunts. It's an overwhelming feeling of being chosen to be both someone's one true love and their lifelong servant at the same time.

My first born turned ten recently, and her sister is now eight, so the baby days are long behind us. These days they are smart, passionate, driven academic stars. They are also goofball performers who don silly outfits and make videos of plays they act out in the living room. They are athletes, they are readers, they are selfless champions of their friends. They are everything I ever hoped they would be, and more than I ever imagined they could be. And they are wise and fearless in ways that push me to follow in the unique paths that they are now blazing on their own.

My oldest daughter has been in recreational (not competitive) gymnastics for years. She was invited to join the competitive pre-team class repeatedly. She said no, over and over, because, perfectionist that she is, she didn't want the added pressure. I backed her up on this. She holds herself to such a high standard that I've never once scolded her for not taking something seriously enough. Instead, our daily mantra was this very simple exchange. "What is your number one job?" I'd ask her. "To have fun!" she'd say, usually while rolling her eyes. Because it was hard for her to let up the pressure, to relax and enjoy the messiness of life, to laugh at her mistakes. But over summer, when she was asked again to move to pre-team gymnastics, she agreed to try it out. And she loved it. More time doing gymnastics meant mastering more skills and making more friends. But it came at the cost of her down time. In seven months she's moved up two levels, and quadrupled the amount of time she spends at the gym. It's been hard. She's got some brutal days where she's on the go from dawn to dusk without a single moment to stop and rest. I could see it wearing her down this week, when she had a fever that flattened her on Monday, fought through illness for an eleven hour day Tuesday, with the added load of make-up school work from her absence, and rallied for another eleven hour day on Thursday. She pushed through the entire exhausting, busy week on fumes. It was hard for the protective mom in me to watch. I told her that if it's just too hard, she doesn't have to stick with gymnastics. "Remember, your number one job is having fun!" I reminded her. She nodded, dark circles under her puffy eyes, soldiering on through a single sheet of Common Core math where the simplest division problem requires hundreds of steps and pages of graphics, and said, "I'm not going to quit. I want this." And it awed me, this grit of hers.

I will never regret the years of endless diapers, sleepless nights, toddler battles. They were the foundation for this, the privilege of now getting to watch these two amazing souls on their paths to being the kind of strong, fierce, silly and joyful women I myself aspire to be. I'm fantastic at not quitting. I'm better at that than at remembering to have fun. I've been the perfectionist who shunned challenges I wasn't certain I could beat. Of course. The mantra wasn't just for her. It never is, is it?

On Wednesday, halfway through the most brutal week she's had in months, I stood and watched my girl, my bright shining star of perfection, make up a silly song and dance number with her sister and friend. She staged this show on the lawn outside gymnastics, singing at top volume, spinning around with tons of people passing by and taking in the display. Because, you see, her number one job is having fun. The fact that she can do this, find this unbridled joy while running on empty, pushing herself so hard she can barely keep her eyes open after dinner, is my best example yet of my own potential. She's leading the way now. And I'm honored to follow her.

Studio Grow

It can be hard, on these cold wintry mornings, to keep two restless, bored kids from causing each other bodily harm. Often, the best thing to do is just get them out of the house to burn off some energy and distract them from each other. Since I hate shopping, and my girls have no interest in food, things like eating out or heading to the mall just don’t do it for us. There aren’t many options when it isn’t nice enough weather for a park outing, but one great alternative near us is a place called Studio Grow: http://www.studiogrow.com.

It’s an indoor play space, geared toward the toddler thru five-year-old set, with just about every activity you can imagine. I just spent three hours there with the girls, and the only reason we left after three hours was because they were closing for the day. The girls could’ve gone on playing there forever. During those three hours, the girls danced, painted, made play-doh art, put on a puppet show, listened to story time, climbed on a jungle gym, rode these little cars down a coaster-like slide, played with dinosaurs, trains, blocks, and farm animals, read books, dressed up, played with dolls and prepared pretend food in their favorite “kitchen room,” experimented with gears, stamped, colored, glued, and a bunch of other activities that I was too busy socializing with the other moms to notice. Really, there’s no other place quite like it around here, where kids can be kids, busily and safely, and the messy arts and crafts aren’t in my house or on my carpet, where they can make new friends and so can I, and where I leave with two reluctant but very tired kids who actually nap (well, one napped anyway).

If you haven’t been, and you live in the Bay Area, it’s worth checking out. They have one in Berkeley and one in Concord, and both are owned by the nicest brothers-in-law you’ll ever meet. Your kids will thank you for it.