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Category: Family, Parenting

Maverick in the Middle

She didn’t like being twelve.

It felt like someplace between who she’d been
and who she was about to be.

― Alice Hoffman, The Story Sisters

Poor Mav is basically the living, breathing personification of middle child syndrome.

Not testing boundaries and breaking the parents in and hogging attention by being a royal pain in the ass. That’s the privilege of the oldest child.

Not whining and being cute to get his way. That’s the MO of the youngest child.

No, Maverick has been the easygoing, fair-tempered child his entire life… and so he tends to miss out on stuff amidst the demands of life and noisier siblings.

Things like birthday blog posts. His birthday was August 10th. I’m sorry, buddy. I’ll make it up to you in photo collages.

I’ve mentioned before, in Jake’s birthday blog posts, that Jake was a very demanding child attention-wise. He had a lot of little medical issues it took us a long time to figure out, and so he was colicky and clingy and didn’t sleep well. I wasn’t at all sure I could handle a second baby when I found out I was carrying one. I was scared out of my ever-loving mind that I wasn’t ready for two kids.

Maverick was an easy pregnancy. He arrived after a very short labor, all 9.5 pounds of him. Since he was so big, he had to be pricked for blood sugar tests every 2 hours while in the hospital, and he took it uncomplainingly like a champ.

9.5 pounds at birth meant he fit into 4-6mo clothes within weeks- this was the photo we sent out with birth announcements, I think.

The night we came home from the hospital, he nursed, went to sleep in his bassinet, and I fell asleep in my own bed… and woke up some 7 hours later, to the light of day.

He’d slept through the night his first night home.

(People tend not to believe this, but my hand to god it’s true. And to this day the kid treasures his sleep. I don’t care if we’re at a kicking party or the Queen of England is hanging out, bedtime will roll around and Mav will be like, see ya suckers, I’m tired.)

Anyway, it sounds awesome but it was most definitely not. It was probably the most terrifying moment of my life, waking up and realizing he hadn’t wakened to nurse. Jeff and I were so very afraid, going to the bassinet and looking in. But he got up, although it took some effort and he was grumpy about it. Mav is not a morning person.

It’s funny how many personality traits can be disclosed right away. Maverick, in 12 years, hasn’t done much but confirm that he is who he is. He’s laid back, easy to please, but stubborn as hell. He is silly but sweet. He likes food. He likes to know how things work. He like math, and animals. This is the way I’ve been describing him since he was about 18 months old, and it still holds true.

He went through a period of time when he wouldn’t pose for a picture. Well, no, that’s not true at all. I have tons of pictures of him and he posed gleefully. He just wouldn’t smile for the camera. We call this “monsterface.” “Oh look, here’s another picture of Mav in monsterface.” (Jake went through a similar phase where he’d cross his eyes for photos, we called them his “gooey eyes.”)

Eventually we all gave up and everybody was all about the monsterface.

This is off-topic, but Mav has the hardest head known to man. This picture makes me laugh every time because I know Mav inadvertantly headbutted Jeff just before it was taken. There was this audible crack— yet he is unfazed.

Maverick was born in the year 2000, a millenium baby, Year of the Dragon just like his parents. I tell you this mostly because I once laboriously made him a dragon costume, forming a delicate wing skeleton to hang an even more delicate gold-embossed fabric that I’d been holding onto for years on… and he slept through the Halloween parade and had to wear a coat for trick-or-treating. Behold the dragon.

During his one year in Catholic school, Jake was required to dress for Halloween as a saint, so he was St. George and Mav was the dragon.

Occupying the 5th position in the Chinese Zodiac, the Dragon is the mightiest of the signs. Dragons symbolize such character traits as dominance and ambition. Dragons prefer to live by their own rules and if left on their own, are usually successful. They’re driven, unafraid of challenges, and willing to take risks. They’re passionate in all they do and they do things in grand fashion. Unfortunately, this passion and enthusiasm can leave Dragons feeling exhausted and interestingly, unfulfilled.

While Dragons frequently help others, rarely will they ask for help. Others are attracted to Dragons, especially their colorful personalities, but deep down, Dragons prefer to be alone. Perhaps that is because they’re most successful when working alone. Their preference to be alone can come across as arrogance or conceitedness, but these qualities aren’t applicable. Dragons have tempers that can flare fast!

That sounds about right.

Maverick is 12 now, an in-between year, too old to baby and yet not a teen. I don’t know how much longer he’ll let me post photos of him blasted with pink, or playing a fife…

I don’t know when he’ll decide he’s too old to dance with his great-grandma.

I admit that I miss this face.

I look forward to seeing him become even more of the person I’ve always known him to be. That person is pretty awesome.

But he’ll always be my baby. So there.

Happy belated birthday, Maverick.

Now go do the dishes, please.

Cass wants me to make sure you know she's in my belly in this photo.

August 28, 2012
The Color Run: Tips, Photos, Video
The best color in the whole world,

is the one that looks good, on you!

―Coco Chanel

We did it! And it was tons of fun. Jake’s video proof:

Last Sunday we got up at the crack of dawn and drove to Philly, battling traffic and jockeying for a parking spot, to join 23,000 other people dressed in their morning whites to run the 2012 Philadelphia Color Run.

People say I look like these children.

Runners and walkers were sent off in waves from the Philadelphia Art Museum from 7:00- 8:00. We managed to meet up by some small miracle with some other members of our team and we were off somewhere in the middle of the hour.

The color throws were strategically placed for maximum visibility, for either the runners (for a little boost to get to the next color) or from the road (drivers enthusiastically honking in support). It was full of awesome.

The others jackrabbitted ahead and I jogged/walked with Mav and Cass.

We rejoined at the finish line, and tossed our packets of color with everyone else. It was something. The kids loved it, and I loved it like a kid.

Except when Lauren offered to take my picture with Kristin, and then pelted us in the face while our guards were down. Five days later and I’m STILL pulling pink out of my ears. Bloody hell, Lauren. Rude. Watch your back.

A dude with a lawnmower blew the majority of the color off us before we ventured back to the car. That was a mistake; Cass was upset about losing her badge of color.

We took advantage of a few photo opps. I know, you’re shocked. I thought about staging some more photos (grocery shopping, the library etc) but we were all frankly exhausted.

It was so worth the early morning, the long drive, the stress over parking (which was the hardest part of the day, and I’ve experienced far worse on a normal Saturday in Philly).

The perfect first run for my younger kids. So much energy, so much to look at, an incredible payoff at the end.

A bonding moment as a family, as friends, as a city.

Color Run tips and tricks for you:
- Bring water. There was just one water station during the run; they were generous with the water bottles after but I was grateful we packed our own. The color gets in your mouth as you smile and laugh your way through.
- The color really is non-toxic. It’s cornstarch, and while it did sting when Lauren ruthlessly bombarded us with it, it was just the fact of having something thrown at your eyeball. It teared out in moments, no big deal. Let the kids go wild. (And my phone was fine in spite of being absolutely covered. I had it in a Ziploc for a while but it was too hard to take pictures.)
- The pink does stain a little if you’re wearing an older shirt. I had to buy new ones for me and Cass and those were fine. Mav wore one of Jeff’s old shirts and that stayed vaguely pink. To get it off your skin, first slather some lotion on, then shower and use a scrub. We had apricot scrub; olive oil & brown sugar will do in a pinch.
- Bring washcloths, some soap and a little extra water. While I didn’t mind the color staying on my face and body for the ride home, I didn’t like it being on my hands. I was glad we were able to scrub those down a bit.
- A bandana is a good idea for coloring your nose/mouth while running through the color, especially if you plan to linger long enough for a larger dose. It got to be a little much at times.
- Towels for the car = a must do.
- Don’t sweat if you don’t think you can run 5K. I didn’t, I walked almost the whole way, as did a huge number of people. Sightsee. Enjoy.
- Don’t miss out on this run if at all possible. Check here to see if there’s a location near you.
This Sunday it’s the Merrell Down & Dirty Mud Run for Jake and me; Cass is doing the 1 mile Adventure Run. Wish us luck! I’m a little nervous about this one.
July 13, 2012
‘Don’t teach your children to love the wilderness?’ BULL PUCKEY.
BULL PUCKEY, I say.

I ran across this commentary on Jorgen Randers’ ‘2052: a global forecast for the next forty years,’ slated for publication in July, and was so flabbergasted by what I read in there that I’ve had the post open in my browser for days until I had time to write about it:

There is a section called “What Should You Do?” which is usually the part in such books that picks you up a bit, and makes you believe that you can do something…

[One] is “don’t teach your children to love the wilderness”. Randers reasons that over the next 50 years we will see the ongoing erosion of biodiversity and wilderness, due to climate change and humanity’s reach into more and more remote areas. A love for “old, undisturbed nature”, he argues, is something it will become increasingly difficult to satisfy. ”By teaching your child to love the loneliness of the untouched wilderness, you are teaching her to love what will be increasingly hard to find”, he argues, which will lead to unhappiness and despondency. ”Much better then”, he concludes, “to rear a new generation that find peace, calm and satisfaction in the bustling life of the megacity – and with never-ending music piped into their ears”.

What fresh hell is this?

(And no, I don’t mean the decidedly British punctuation issues.)

I know that it’s reported that the average American kid spends 4-7 minutes daily outdoors in unstructured play (just outdoors, not specifically in a “wild space”) and a hurts-my-heart-to-hear seven HOURS parked in front of a screen. It’s mind-blowing and seemingly insurmountable, but there are tons of initiatives trying to reverse that trend, from the National Wildlife Federation’s Green Hour to KaBOOM’s Playground Challenge to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to Screen Free Week and so on.

Sure, we could just teach our kids to learn to just love their bodies, no matter how rotund and unhealthy they become, but we are not resigned. Right? We continue to fight that battle because we f*cking care about our children and their health and even if the tide is incredibly hard to turn, we have to try. If only to keep reminding everyone that we could be healthier, we can eat better and move more and spend more time outdoors, and we bloody well should.

We continue to teach our kids to value things that have value.

The idea of not teaching our kids to love and value the wilderness because one day it might not be there is like saying we shouldn’t teach our kids to love us— because one day we will be gone.

We also teach them how to live without us. We teach them in the hopes that they will carry us in their heart and their minds and in their words and their actions. And in the same way, it’s practical to teach them how to live in cities, how to navigate and find beauty there; but we should strive also to teach them to love wilderness and open space and green life, in the hopes that they will seek it and nurture it and preserve it. Because it has value.

Children will only try to preserve what they love, that’s human nature. And they will only learn to love wild spaces, solitude, freedom if we give them time to enjoy it; and by showing by example. Which is to say:

GET OUT THERE.

National Park attendance by young people is down. The more attendance declines, the more likely it is that these natural spaces will lose their government funding and protection. And once they’re gone… they’re gone.

But you don’t have to travel to a national park. There are plenty of pockets of untended nature all over the country, and they need protection. These are safe havens for wildlife, travel corridors. They are escapes for the human animal, a place to reconnect to the wildness and the peace within. A place for you to share with your kids. To create memories. To develop a stronger sense of self. To be healthier. To foster a love of nature.

For the record, there are some other things increasingly hard to find that I’ve also taught my kids to value:
- personal responsibility
- respect for their elders
- regular household chores that are actually useful (cooking, cleaning, laundry)
- proper grammar
- being well-read
- holding doors open for people behind them; running ahead to open doors for those who might have trouble
- manners in general
Because they have value. That’s reason enough.

What say you?
June 20, 2012