Team Gray!

Yanni at 18

Originally uploaded by kzoomoo

I would really recommend a pageant for any college bound senior. It’s good for the kid, too.

I mean, all the details we’ve attended to with this pageant have really been good for me. There are so many things to get together during your child’s senior year. And when you’re homeschooling, all that planning falls on your shoulders.

Not such a good thing when you’re chronically disorganized. So this pageant has been a splash of water in my face. I signed my daughter up for the ACT two times. We have completed 1 1/2 college applications, received donations and ads to support her Jr. Miss campaign, crossed every t and dotted every i.

We drop her off for a week she’ll never forget on Sunday. The pageant is next Saturday. She’s already won so much. We are looking forward to even more success.

What could you sign up for to make you more productive in your child’s life?

I look forward to going to the Y to work out a couple days a week. Tuesday is one of them, and my new obsession is cardio tennis. You are supposed to keep your feet moving the whole time, and there’s a lot of running after balls and trying to hit them and what not.

Having spent a good part of my summer at the tennis court, I was excited to finally make my way to the tennis house at the Y. The class is free for the first visit. I was hooked from the very first day, even though I got a bit dehydrated and came home red-faced. My daughter could tell by the glow in my eyes I’d be back. I tell everyone I see about it, and my brother joined the class, as did my friend Carol.

Today the aerobics instructor/tennis pro introduced a new game. We paired off and played a round of doubles with another pair. As soon as anyone scored 1 point, we’d run to the other side of the net. While we were running, the teacher would throw a ball high in the air, and the first person to get to the other side would return the ball to the other side. Do you see where the cardio fits in here?

The large class was sweating through this game when one of the new people ran to the other side of the net, met the ball, and then slipped, lost her footing and fell down. It looked embarrassing, and would have been funny if she had gotten back up. But she didn’t. She lay there in pain.

The teacher ran to her side and told the rest of us to pick up the balls. It seemed like there were only 5 balls on the ground, we got them up so quickly. One of the people in the class had a medical background. She examined the woman, heard that she’d hurt her left ankle and her thumb, and suggested she go to the hospital. The patient wanted the teacher to go with her.

That’s when I found out that the core class members, the people that go to the class twice a week, and take several other exercise classes together, had planned a baby shower for the teacher today. And there was that pesky matter of this being an aerobics class and we had to keep our feet moving. So we played a couple more games. The core people rescheduled the shower for Thursday, and Carol and I tried to do abs without benefit of the teacher trying to kill us.

Carol and I also take the class at the other Y on Friday evenings. That class is more tennis, less cardio. I like the balance of the two. My shins are usually hurting so badly from the Tuesday and Thursday class that I don’t like to take it two days in a row. I may make an exception this week.

I want to join the baby shower.

I was pumping and working on nursing Chanya when I read To Train Up A Child. I had thought I was reading it more for interest than anything else. It slowly convinced me of the value of training my children as a I read along.

But I didn’t have any intention in actually doing what it said.

Then my husband asked me if I was using it on the baby. And I had actually been subtly implementing some of the techniques in the book, I guess, and I blurted out that I was going to train the baby by the book.

Then all hell broke out. I found myself repeatedly tweeting, “listening to baby screaming. Baby who should be sleeping.” The daily crying was grating on my nerves. Surely I was doing something wrong.

And then something miraculous happened. I was able to put the baby down to sleep and she would put herself to sleep. I have NEVER had a child who could do that. I have always been the one to rock/nurse/stroke/sleep on the floor, etc. to get my child to go down.

The baby grew and she was friendly and confident to approach other young children, rather than this clingy, shy awkward creature like all the other children. There must be something to this child training, I thought.

Then we went Amish. Training all the other children more diligently and intelligently became more of a priority.

And I’m back to getting my butt kicked. The baby is knocking on 2 years old and is growing a will. She’s throwing multiple daily tantrums, and I’m starting to see a connection between the older kids and their disorder and the baby’s tantrums. I am finding myself having to be way firmer, yet calmer than I’ve ever been able to be. I struggle with my emotions, and I’m always second-guessing myself.

I’m looking for evidence that I’m doing the right thing. Where do you find encouragement to continue on a difficult path?