Back from Duluth

 And busy as ever, of course. I've been absorbed in a project of which more at a later date (nothing life-changing, just absorbing) and the baseball tournaments continue unabated. Mostly without me, too, I am sorry to say. I am planning to attend a game today (but only one) and with the one I went on Friday that makes the most games of any one tournament I've attended this season. This makes me sad, less for the loss of all those games I could have been watching than for the way, when I show up, none of the other parents know me. Sigh. C'est la vie. Even if I attended every game and every practice, these parents live all over creation. Or the greater Denver metro area, anyway. It is not a situation conducive to grownup bond-forming.

These photos make it look so sunny and pleasant.

 But! Enough complaining. It was a hectic week, I spent much of it in airplanes/airports, and the second night I got home Silas's old long-suffering gerbil died (quietly in his sleep, I am relieved to report). Silas was distraught and felt that his grief required a day off of school (denied.) He also began researching replacement pets and was disappointed to find that the more playful an animal is, the less likely I am to approve it. (Ferrets? In your dreams, buddy.)

In fact, it was 33 degrees and snowing most of the time.

 The garden is growing in greenish bounds and could be using my constant attention (this is really what I want to be doing, rather than driving to baseball games/ soccer games/ birthday parties/ the store). I finished Undaunted Courage, felt bad for Lewis, and signed Helen up for swim team (since baseball is clearly NOT ENOUGH.) At least that's with friends and other neighbors, the same ones I am delighted to see and gossip with at soccer games. Yesterday, in fact, as I drove Helen from the soccer game to the American Girl Doll store to buy a present for the party she was going to later, and reflected pleasantly on the chats I'd had on the sidelines (these chats tend to rather overshadow the game, which is surely as it should be, unlike the tense silence at baseball games), I thought, Raising Arizona-style, of the distant gray-haired future, in which perhaps these women would be my actual friends with whom I would actually do things, like drive into the city and attend concerts and shows or drive into the mountains and drink beer in the sunset.

My annual Duluth run.

It could happen, I suppose. Or there will be others. I have to assume that there will be somebody, that once the hectic smash of the current nontimes have passed (and they will pass, that is certain, with the swiftness of a freight train), that we will actually pick ourselves up in the ensuing silence and go about having a life of our own again.

First firsts

First day of first grade:

First day of the last year of elementary school (ce n'est pas possible):

First photo of the first season of the sideyard garden, of which I am inordinately proud (see also: the nectarine tree behind the kids above. You would think I was sprouting these fruits myself):

Pumpkins, sunflowers, morning glories, beans, a lonely (and late-developing) stalk of corn. A glorious case of powdery mildew on the curcubitae associates.

It's been a good week so far. I've heard rumors of kids who dread going back to school and get grumpy and weepy and out of sorts as the ominous day approaches, but I have not given birth to children of this stripe. They were little wound-up springs of anticipation all last week and they have been exhausted but jubilant (and kind of strung out) this week. They both have male teachers this year and while Helen is on occasion prejudiced against boy teachers and boys in general, she has so far given a tentative stamp of approval to her teacher. Silas is thrilled unto death. As he should be. His teacher is young, funny, energetic and smart: he makes me wish I could be going to fifth grade. I have high hopes for this year. At the very least, maybe Si's writing scores won't decline over the course of the year, as they have the past two years in a row. Argh.

One thing that has been kind of--not sad, exactly, but melancholy--is that by fifth grade, we are getting into the time when parents who chose our elementary school for list-y, rate-y, type-A kind of reasons are starting to get restless and look for the next Xtreme Education Challenge. I sound judgy but I'm not, not really; I have certainly played in that tournament myself over the years. However, in a possibly ironic twist, and one which I did not quite anticiapte, the kids who are leaving now tend to be the most interesting and unusual ones--the boy who has already started his own business, the smart, arty girl with the Velma vibe and the awesome glasses whom I maaaybe had had a little fantasy of S dating sometime in the future. I was kind of looking forward to seeing how these kids developed, come middle school and high school; now I see that I won't. They aren't regular friends of Si's, and I don't know the parents, so: chapter finished. See ya. So I'm a little bummed for that.

Overall, though: wow. What a difference a year makes. Last year we were up to our eyeballs in drywall dust, mold, torn-out walls and money panic, not to mention the first prickings of irritation and misgiving about our choice of builders. There wasn't one thing that was easy, from keeping track of school-to-home papers to washing the damn dishes. Now, despite a triple-book schedule of baseball, swimming and soccer (we're like, a sporty family--I never would've thought that, not in a million years), M's four-year review at work and accompanying 80-hour-a-week workweek, things feel smooth.

Being a Baseball Mom Will Be a Lot Better When It's WARM

This weekend marked the inauguration of a time that I've been dreading since back before we had kids, back when the cheerful mortgage broker cheerfully remarked that he hadn't gone camping at all in years and years due to his sons being in baseball. (Kids' baseball season typically goes from early April to mid-July, with two or so games per week plus practices.) At the time this felt like it would basically be the end of the world: what, no CAMPING? No getting out of town all summer ever? So that instead I can sit in the hot grass and watch short kids in funny suits bat a ball around a dusty square? I will NEVER, EVER let my kids play baseball ever.

Aaaand, nine years later, here we are. Baseball parents. For the next two months all of my Saturdays and Sundays are reserved; Silas is also practicing at least two times a week. In addition, Helen's doing gymnastics. On paper, it sounds pretty much like Melospiza Hell.

Well, I'm here to report that so far, Hell hasn't been so bad. Yes, there are better things in life than sitting around and watching your kid get creamed in baseball. And next time I will PACK MORE SWEATERS AND ALSO SOME BLANKETS AND A THERMOS OF HOT COFFEE. Preferably spiked with rum. But it has an enjoyable mellowness, this life: sitting around, calling out "Good play!" and "Way to go, Nate!" and "You can DO it, Silas!"Not worrying all weekend about Finishing Projects or Getting Things Accomplished or Cleaning the House, which is what I mostly did back in the days before we had kids. I also spent a lot of energy stressing myself out about not doing more.

It helps that I'm not working full time, and that for the most part I do have time to do some of the things I like to do. I know I will have some weekends when I will feel like I'm drowning, what with all the Obligations and wanting to do ANYTHING but drive my kid around from game to game. But these will be rare. I hope.

Also, it helps that seven years in, I've mostly resigned myself to the one of the central facts of parenthood: there's a lot of enforced waiting. This is really what I dreaded most about being a mom: my life would no longer be my own. I used to HATE waiting. I hated having to put off doing what I wanted to do because someone else was late, or sleeping in, or reading every bloody section of the everloving paper. Now waiting for people is mostly what I do. And while I still don't LOVE it, I'm a lot better at it, and furthermore, you know what? I'm a lot more pleasant to be around as a result. Who woulda thought?