04 December 2011

The Friday Top Five: The Top Five Things You Give Up When You Become A Parent

5) Being Cool: Although some parents try desperately to remain cool by declaring to all the world that  they would "would never be caught dead in a minivan," having an infant pee, poop, and vomit on you makes what type of ride you're rolling in the least of your problems. You have to worry about whether anyone at work can smell that vomit on your clothes because you were too tired to change them on account of staying up all night wondering why how your child will cry all evening for you then manage to sleep all afternoon when you need to run errands.

4) Listening to your music in the Car: I have tried desperately to indoctrinate my children to my musical aesthetic. It has worked for the most part. Sometimes, it is a little embarrassing. I mean, I remember my boys singing "Brass Monkey" at some pretty inopportune times as well. Now, my youngest wants to hear her Suzuki violin CD and everyone in the car will sing Lightly Row, Twinkle Little Star (to the rhythm of "Mississippi hotdog"—a personal favorite of mine). I have also listened to enough Disney tunes in the car with the kids that I have temporarily "misplaced" the CD... perhaps forever.

3) Reasoning: It is nearly impossible to try to reason with five year old. Their brains—although amazing sponges—do not function quite the same way as a fairly well-adjusted adult. I use "fairly adjusted" here, because, let's just face it, all of us are still recovering from the trauma of are dysfunctional childhoods. Children believe that are at the center of the universe and that everyone and everything should revolve around them. Forget trying to speak sensibly to a screaming toddler. What I have learned is that inconsolable screaming over
not having the right dinner fork or wrong socks to wear with their school clothes is usually a result of on of two things:

                        1) child is hungry
                        2) child is tired

Here is a diagram of how the average child thinks:


2) Sanity: Yeah, wifey and I left this at the turnstile long ago. (I am not even sure what that means). All I can attest to is that having young, fragile lives to take care of every second of the day is a daunting task. There are times when I have been so crazed trying to get the kids ready to do something that I leave the house without remembering to bring my computer, or lunch, or brain to work with me.

1) Sleeping In: Yeah, forget this completely. Sleeping in when you have small children means waking up past 7 a.m. I remember the first time we had to set a mandatory "sleep in" time with my oldest son. He came into our bedroom and climbed into bed with me and asked if we could go downstairs and play. It was 6:30. I said "No, buddy. We have to sleep until seven o'clock." He nestled in right next to me and went back to sleep.... or so I thought. As soon as the clock hit 7 a.m., he turned around with his
eyes wide open and said "Okay!  It's seven o'clock daddy, let's go downstairs!" Ugh!


Training: Training is going pretty well, as in I am finally training and not just cobbling together a bunch of half-assed workouts and feeling good about myself. Guilt has a way of turning the screw and

My recent delve back into the world of training/self-flaggalation has been directly linked to a few different factors:

1) I was tired feeling like out-of shape. If I intend on keeping my ridiculous Ironman like diet (which I have absolutely no intention of departing with), then I thought that perhaps I should start training more consistently. I am self-motivated, but I needed some time off to regroup after Rev3 Full Cedar Point to reassess what I wanted to focus on this season.

2) I have a coach. I am now trained by Coach Kelly over at T2Multisport. The cool part about training with Kelly is that I have known her for a long time. We went to graduate school together some.... hmm, 12 years ago!

3) Work: This semester has been incredibly crazy, not to mention the fact that we moved twice in the span of two months. We are settled now, but it made training insane.

I have some lower back pain that I have been wrestling with. I could not figure out where it was coming from. I thought that perhaps it was a result of bumping up the training again. Wifey's back has also been hurting her. We have been giving each other nightly massages. Bonus.

Last night I finally figured out where all my pain is coming from. I knew that is must be some movement that I have been doing because it is really localized. While I sit in my office, I often throw my feet up on top of a chair—as I am sometimes sitting in front of my computer for hours out of my day—and write. Last evening, I noticed that my torso was having to twist around to put my feet up and that the numerous hours I have spent in that position have caused a great deal of pain. It reminded me of when I was a graduate student at the Ithaca Conservatory and I spent the summer painting houses. I was young then (with more hair), and I spent hours on a ladder painting trim with my arm stretched over my head. I didn't notice anything at the time until the next morning when I got up and my neck was absolutely killing me.

The Rest:


My youngest has graduated to her first real violin after spending a few weeks on the noodle-roni box. So awesome! Watch out, Vanessa Mae!










8 comments:

RockStarTri said...

Holmes, I'm going on 10 years listening to Suzuki in the car. I have a concert to attend on Sunday with all of the kids in the school from the ones who just hold the fiddle to my kids who come close to actually playing. It is bad when you start thinking of a real song and it morphs in your brain to Watermellon,Watermellon...

The most pressure that I ever had was when I had to accompany my youngest in her first concert since she was sick for the formal practice. When I asked how she think she did afterwards, she said she "nailed" it. She was 5.

Unknown said...

Love this post. A few comments:

1. The following can be heard regularly in our house: "You may not come out of your room until your clock says seven-oh-oh."
2. Look at Stella's "monster fingers"!! Awesome...maybe she and Noah can play duets, however his progress has been quite slow!! At this point he can play two notes! Ryan, on the other hand, is on MINUET #3!!!
3. Thanks for the shout-out! Please fill in your Training Peaks! :)

Hollywood said...

That diagram may be the best thing I've seen all week! And yet another reason I will continue my 'kids are icky' campaign, and never have them

TriMOEngr said...

For the moms, I would add #6: Memory - I truly believe that each time we go to the delivery room, we leave half of the brain we walked in with. This means that even if you've got 19 kids and counting, you never get to "zero", but that the more you have the less you can remember without extensive notes, calendars, and things stuck to your fridge. I knew I was no longer "cool" when my kids pointed out how old and fat I was. We mostly listen to "my" music in the car, but I knew 4 still applied to me because most of my more recent downloads have been by "Disney" or "Nick" stars (Lemonade Mouth, Selena Gomez, and Victoria Justice). I'm amazed that even at 10.5, my son can still lose all sense of reasoning when hungry or tired. SO TRUE! Loved the diagram. Finally out of toddler brains - would be interested to see same diagram for said 10 year old. Sanity is exponentially related to number of children. Therefore, I have more than some (you), less than others. Sleeping in - I'm really enjoying doing this occassionally now that they are older (7 and 10). I can close my door and go back to sleep after telling them to plop in front of the TV and eat whatever they can get in the kitchen without my help. LOL Cute noodle box. Loved the "dad" part of this post!

Congrats on the renewed interest in training and your coach! Way to go! Yay on massages!

Patty said...

Hahaha! The top 5 is awesome...even for someone without children. :) Your 5 little dolls are amazing though. I know it is well worth listening to disney tunes for those precious kids!

Good choice on getting a coach! I have a local coach, but I took a little time off from him since Branson. I really need him back though. I am not capable of doing my own training...without overtraining.

Caratunk Girl said...

The noodleroni box is hilarious!!

Anonymous said...

Yeah I am going to bookmark this post. My son is coming up on his first birthday (January 1st!) and I might need to come back to reference it! Thanks for the great information!

I really dig the Friday top 5's.

From sunny, beautiful, Colorado Springs....(just visiting)

Dave

Quincy Fleming said...

Love the blog...we have a lot in common...triathlon addiction, wanting to stay married, trying not to get fat in the offseason, kids who play the violin (I can never decide if I like Mississippi-stop-stop or up-pony-down-pony best).

Any advice for me on getting my 7 year old to do the solo they've asked her to perform...she's such a ham I thought she'd be thrilled, but she's freaking out about it...

Oh, and honestly, the thing that makes me the craziest about life with kids is that I haven't finished a task or a thought. In. Seven. Years.