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He’s officially a Tiger Cub.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

Kitintale from Yann Gross on Vimeo.

For the science geeks out there:
http://sciencetoymaker.org/

We’re in the market for good child sized safety glasses after child A almost blinded child B when child A, distracted from the bottle rocket construction momentarily, tried to find out what happens when you apply forced air to sibling’s eye-socket.

For the scientists in the room wondering just that – a lot of Homer Simpson style yelling, much crying by child B, a little squirt of blood Horney Toad style, frantic googling and consulting of emergency personnel, cold compress, dilation confirmation, vision confirmation (thank god for early readers!), and a little Tylenol for all parties involved.

Will: “Mom, some kids at school were making fun of you”
Mom: “Oh yeah? How so?”
Will: “They said, ‘Yo mama’s so fat she doesn’t even fit in the universe'”

The correct response was probably not, “Well didja punch them?”

I played on a co-ed soccer team from 1st grade until 5th grade, and though I could identify the three best players on the team, the classification stopped there. The rest of us were just on the team. Whether this was a gender thing, result of my personality (apparently *everyone* but me knows girl politics start in pre-school – OMG “heathers” wasn’t just a movie?), or related to the fact that on that co-ed team, “co-ed” never included more than 2 girls making the comparison like apples to bananas, I just never felt the need to calculate my place in the pecking order. This left me utterly unprepared for the first week of soccer angst that befell Will.

I’ve written about how soccer wasn’t high on his list of activities for the fall, but yeah, I signed him up anyway. Soccer is our insurance against depression, social angst, and lack of clarity. Probably more important than the fact that soccer offers Will an athletic outlet to burn through that boy energy, it also does wonders for his social life. Nothing bonds kids to each other like adversity, and sports teams made up mostly of classmates have one of the higher adversity per minute ratios of the legal options. No one survives a season without having the air knocked out of him with a rogue ball. Walk that off and go back to play? You gain the instant respect of your teammates. 90 minutes of ball-play on an unlighted pitch on a frigid autumn night tests anyone’s constitution. When they win, they win together. When they lose, they lose together. Such is soccer. So when Will sounded anxious about his first practice, trying to talk me out of taking him, I was nervous. What if he is “bookish”? Maybe boys worry about the pecking order in 1st grade? Maybe soccer was better on paper.

I did as any good parent does and spent the 15 minute drive to the field talking through Will’s fears. No, that kindergartener who is the best player of the k-3s would not be on his team. No, he would not be thrown onto the field into a kick-off against other kids. This would be practice where they’d dribble through cones, practice running and passing. He’d learn how to play soccer.

I threw him out onto the field and crossed my fingers.

Sure enough, 90 minutes later he ran off the pitch beaming from ear to ear going on and on about how much fun that practice had been. The following week the report changed to, “Mom! I’m the second best player after only two practices!” Oh, really! It turns out, he just felt he was. He had kicked the ball up into the air over the edge of the field and he and 4 other kids stood around contemplating how to retrieve it until one was coached to just climb down after it. In Will’s book, that was professional soccer, immediately catapulting him to 2nd in the pecking order. And hey, if he feels like #2, I’m going to let him be #2 until he realizes otherwise.

Will’s dinner request:

School is back in session and we’re running ahead of schedule in our tour of childhood infectious diseases having missed the first half of Will’s first week due to viral pink eye in both eyes (and one of mine). I apparently also got the knock-you-dead-with-aches respiratory virus to go with it which he somehow missed. Feeling left out, Sylvie brought us all head lice, and so we spent our evening last night de-lousing and nit-picking. Whee!

All of this excitement has me making preparations for my end because at this rate, I don’t have long. When I die, make me into a record, here.

When you leave to take your dog for a walk…
6 drummers, one apartment. It starts a little slow, but I did laugh out loud.