Thanks, folks

Andy ran/walked a 5k yesterday to raise money for kids with hemophilia. I am so proud of him! He (we) raised more than $1,000. Granted I did most of the haranguing of family and friends, he still practiced and ran the race. Plus he got a lot of props for his efforts so I think he's motivated to do it next year. Meg even wants in on the action but she wants to ride her bike so she can win.

Yellow belt

Andy's been taking jiujitsu through the city. It's been a good fit of practicing wrestling-type moves (not the official term, certainly) which is helping with his confidence. He has expressed worries before that other kids would pick on him. None have really, but this is helping him feel he could hold his own.

After 12 weeks, he tested for his "yellow belt", the next step up from a "white belt." He had to demonstrate five moves against an older kid and then he sparred with one of the two girls in his class also up for a yellow belt. I videotaped the sparring.

It was actually kind of awesome watching them wrestle. I was really impressed with how well he held his own and how well he stayed in it. After this, he sparred with this same girl one more time. Then they practiced one kid vs two kids. Andy did that as both the double-team and the singleton. His sensei's point of the double-team is to help the kids handle themselves in case of an unfair fight. I like that the class focuses on self-defense. I think that's such a useful thing for a child to know.

He was so proud of himself afterward that he actually told me he was happy. That's a rarity. It's like Simon Cowell saying he liked your performance.

School age kids

Have you guys noticed a trend to holding your kids back in school? I'm seeing a lot of it lately where parents of kids are holding them back rather than putting them into school. So if your kid turned 5 in June, rather than putting her in kindergarten where the cutoff is usually October 1, holding her back another year so she starts at age 6 instead. The theory is that kids will be more ready at that age and thus have a leg up intellectually, athletically and socially than kids a year older.

I am fortunate to have two kids born in January so I don't really have to make a decision. If I held Andy back a year, he'd be 6 1/2 starting kindergarten and likely 18 months older than some of his peers. That seems pretty funky. I could see if you had a kid on the edge, like a late August birthday. I could see if you talked to his or her teachers and agreed it made sense. So that kid would just be at most a year older than the youngest kids and just a few months older than many.

Socially there can be real difficulties with this. A 14-year-old seventh grader is in a totally different social ballpark than a 12-year-old in terms of dating, physical maturity. Sure, she might be a better lacrosse player, but she's starting to scout out boys when her friends are still watching Miley Cyrus. And intellectually, if I put my kid in a lower grade, what's to say he won't be bored with the lower grade work and lose interest in school altogether rather than being challenged to move forward?

Also, if everyone starts to doing it, then folks of these borderline kids might need to wait another year. Then you end up with kids being 20 when they graduate high school.

I don't know. I want my kids to have the most advantages they can, but I'm not sure this is a good idea.

What do you think?

Sports

Soccer starts in two weeks. And, no, I don't mean me. For the first time in probably 15 years, I'm not currently on a soccer team. I just got burned out playing outdoor, mostly due to my age and out-of-shapeness that I wasn't willing to overcoming for two hours in the sun on a Sunday morning. That part feels weird. As does Andy being signed for soccer. It's a mini-me league that has "games" on Saturday afternoons. And by games, I mean organized playtime. I'm not even sure if there are jerseys, but I'm sure there are trophies.

I even volunteered to be an assistant coach, which both thrills and terrifies me. I always wanted to like coaching. I even went so far as to be help when my dad was my sister Mary's coach back circa 1982. But like my stint as a camp counselor, I was never one with the children and never really acheived that awesome status as a fun coach that also teaches the kids stuff that they really like and listen to. Bjorn did a lot of coaching for Mark and Jennifer in basketball and I loved being a helper to do the quiet tasks like keep the score books and mark off how may fouls every had. I never really aspired to be the one teaching drills. That part filled me with terror.

But Andy needed an assistant coach and I volunteered. Assistant I can probably handle. I think that means making sure parents show up with drinks and snacks after the games. I might even suggest a few drills so long as they don't make me actually run them.

Apu

Andy has trouble with Vs. Instead of saying "very," it tends to come out "wery." Naturally, it just cracks me up. "I've been a wery good boy, Mommy." It's almost as if he has a slight Indian accent the way he talks sometimes -- he says elelator with an L instead of elevator with a V. Sooner or later, his tongue will let him say exactly what he wants or else the peer pressure from his friends will make him conscious enough of the difference that he is conscious enough of it to fix it. For now, I'm just going to enjoy it.

Andy is also quite excited about the Olympics (although he pronounces it the Lym-pics). He wants to get big and run to the finish line. An admirable goal. With his excitement in sports, I also took this as a good opportunity to sign him up for gymnastics for the fall. He says he wants to learn the rings and the bars, but I have a feeling they're just going to do some tumbling. I think he's going to really love it.

Summer colds

We have had a bad run of summer colds this summer and I'm starting to get paranoid about fall and winter. If summer is supposed to be a time of good health, the latest batch of colds does not bode well for us. Andy started with a cold on Friday (sadly, I noticed it during the very cool Steve Songs concert at Wolf Trap). It didn't help that we had a weird schedule all weekend and stayed out and up too late Friday and Saturday. Meg has been flirting with a cough herself and each little cough fills me with dread for fear it will lead to more of the nastiness of last month where she couldn't cough without coughing up her dinner. Blech. Knock wood, cross your fingers, cross your legs -- whatever you like to cross, that these kids finally get back to a healthy place.

Oh, and they can start sleeping again, too, please. Pretty please! With this bout of not sleeping, I have been too tired to stay up and watch much of the Olympics. And I love the Olympics, even if I can't stand Bob Costas.

Meanwhile, Meg is now on solid foods and seems quite taken with them. She's at the cute stage where I can still cram pears and sweet potatoes into her mouth and she hasn't quite gotten coordinated enough to spit them out on purpose and/or grab the spoon and flail it around the room. It's coming, I'm sure. Not to be left out, Andy has taken to Dinobites. Yes, chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs are better than regular chicken nuggets. He even contends that they're not chicken. He doesn't think they're dinosaurs either, "That would be silly, Mommy!" I never did figure out what he thinks they are though.

Today was Monday, which means it was Moonbounce Monday at Andy's school, which is close to being heaven for a 3 1/2 year old. It's a nice way to start the week since he's usually very excited to go. I wonder how it's going to be come September when Monday is just Monday again.