My Life Between Coffee and Wine

My kids are a perfect experiment of how diverse children’s personalities can emerge. They swam out of the same gene pool, were reared in the same home, attended the same schools, experienced the same vacations –  and yet they are as different as night and day.

There is no greater example than their aptitudes with regard to sports. My three brothers played every sport imaginable, including practicing pole vaulting in our front yard over my Volkswagen rabbit. My husband played football and basketball through high school, so introducing our boys to the world of athletics was a given.

Have ball, will play

My youngest could throw a ball – any ball – ambidextrously, even though predominantly left-handed. He is gifted at soccer, golf, – you name it. My eldest must have been reading a book when the universe handed out sports talent.

My oldest attended Montessori school, and we became close friends with several parents of boys his same age. Collectively, mostly likely over cocktails, we decided that when they were three we would all sign up for a soccer team through the local YMCA. We live in the suburbs, which are flooded with kids. So if those poor soccer fields could talk, it would be an extended soliloquy of observations concerning the thousands of kids, parents, and coaches that had stomped across them.

We all excitedly get signed up, attend practices, and get their little uniform, cleats and shin guards. The parents are ready: video recorders fully charged, and in hand for the kids’ first game.

Now these kids are three-years-old.  So during most practices there was more picking of flowers, spinning in circles, and other toddler antics. We were sure the two, thirty minute halves of this game might be “America’s Funniest Home Video” gold, and a winning video was a strategy for funding college some day – so we were ready.

Finally, the referee (very experienced, he must be 14) blows the whistle on this warm fall morning.

Let the games begin

Three year olds don’t really play in formation – it is more like a herd of puppies, in controlled chaos, stumbling all over each other. They are all bunched together, randomly kicking with very little ball contact occurring. Shin guards don’t get this much action during a World Cup match.

All of sudden, my child turns toward me, and breaks out the pack.. Heading for the goal with the ball? No, trotting over to his beaming mother, who is following his beeline to her with the video camera.

Mom: “Honey, is everything ok?”

My Son, putting his pudgy little hands on his hips, and rolling his eyes: “Mom, this is ridiculous. We need another ball, NO ONE is sharing.”

Apparently through all the practices, and excitement around this amazing opportunity, the entire concept of a team sport failed to register. But fear not, his skills in leadership and persuasion soon blossomed from the experience.

Let me explain..

Two weeks later, I arrive at the Montessori school to pick up my children, and my eldest and his two soccer peers are on their hands and knees inside a large wood barrel designed for the kids to crawl through. The headmistress struts up to me and I know I am in trouble. She explains that during recess, she heard girls squealing like pigs caught in an electric fence. When she investigated the source of the ruckus, she sees the three amigos had opened their pants, and were urinating into the open barrel of the play equipment. In front of EVERYONE at recess.

Of course they were

My mind quickly flashes to a passing comment my husband had made. He and the other dads supervised soccer practice earlier this week. When the kids had to pee, the husbands thought it was stupid to hike all the way back to the YMCA building. So he and the other dads shuffled the boys to the tree-lined edge of the soccer field, and “taught” the boys to pee outside. This is apparently a rite of passage to which I was not privy. In my mind, I spike a football and dance in the parent-end zone – “This is not my fault!”

When I arrived home with my child, who luckily had avoided being labeled a pervert, I got the trademark “What did I do that was wrong?” look on my spouse’s face when I relayed the day’s events.

So that afternoon at the school, the headmistress shared something else with me. When she asked Friend #1, whose idea it was, he said my son. Friend # 2 also said it was my dear boy’s brainchild. And when questioned, my spawn volunteered he had thought the whole thing up. At least they are honest.

Fear not, he continued to play soccer for another decade, so it was a good start. Eventually, he stopped asking for his own ball during a game. Progress not perfection, people.

As a working mom, I had a key concern during my two maternity leaves. My babies were going to be in daycare, so I was very, very anxious about them coming home cranky if they were unable to nap with background noise.

So embracing my über-mom mode, I came up with the answer. I left a television or radio softly playing in their nursery while they napped and slept so they would get “conditioned” to sleeping through some noise. We did not co-sleep unless the kid was attached to a boob, usually mine

Let’s just say I overshot my goal. I am a perfectionist, but I hit this sh*t out of the park.

Our house security alarm is 110 decibels, and the horn is in the attic between my kids two bedrooms. Sleepy, pre-coffee mom has, at times, forgotten to turn off the alarm before letting the dogs out early in the morning. They have slept through it every time. When they do wake, and I ask if the alarm scared them, and they both look at me with no point of reference.

In college, my oldest has one 8 o’clock class. I asked him if he has been getting up one time, and he explained that he sets the alarm clock, and then 6 more alarms on his phone random minutes apart (3 minutes, 5 minutes) because he can “off” an alarm in his sleep so proficiently, he needs redundancy. I am proud to say he has only overslept one class this freshman year! Note it was a 10 am class.

My youngest, now 16, should be a lab somewhere. He also sleep-walks. And doesn’t sleep *fully* dressed. Let’s just say we will have to vet the future college roommate carefully.

He started walking at 8 months old, and quickly thereafter, the little acrobat started jumping out of his crib. He didn’t have the verbal skills to shout “Geronimo” but the effect was the same. We moved him into a regular twin bed to avoid both 1) an emergency room co-pay and 2) Child Protective Services investigation. Overall, I would say these two objectives became my main goals of my child rearing.

So at 8 months old, we also discover he is a sleep-walker when he keeps magically appearing in our room in the middle of the night, and doesn’t respond to us when we talk to him. Creepy. We were concerned with a kid less than one year old wandering around the house and down the stairs. Not to mention our shared angst anticipating his perfect timing interrupting “Mommy and Daddy time”

So, we bought a white knob cover that “a child’s dexterity and fine motor skills prevent the turning of the knob.” Well, these college graduate parents spent the better part of 30 minutes getting the damn thing on the inside knob of his bedroom door. We kissed him “good night”, closed the door and before we made it to the top of the stairs in our modest home, the kid was standing behind us like a scene from The Shining.

He is now 16, and the sleeping adventures continue. He has an alarm clock next to his bed, with an 103 decibel alarm and an attachment that goes between the mattresses (pull your mind out of the gutter, please) that shakes the bed. For reference, that is louder than a motorcycle, but slightly less than a power saw. My son’s response? In one seamless, sleeping-olympics qualifying move, he turns off the alarm, flips over, adjusts his pillow and pulls the quilt up over his head.

He blinks at me like I am pathological liar, he has never met, when I appear at his bedside 20 minutes later explaining the time. I often do this slightly louder than 103 decibels, with a bonus expletive creatively inserted into my rant. And my husband wonders “what I do all morning” before I leave for work. Now you know.