Zeke is TEN

 

    I really try hard to make these birthday blogs about the kids and the things I want to remember or admire about their growth.  But real quick, now that my youngest child is officially turning double digits, I am old.  I don't make the rules, it's just a fact, and it leaves me feeling quite shocked about it all.

 Seriously.   I'm aware we had our kids pretty close together, but there's something about my youngest turning 10 and being so far removed from all the baby/toddler/preschool small kid stuff that makes me step back and think....wait...shouldn't we have more of this parenting stuff figured out by now?  Thankfully, we really lucked out, cause Zeke really does make it pretty easy (at least for us and our style of parenting).   He is rambunctious, daring, adventurous, playful and ornery, so he still keeps us on our toes without a doubt, which has its own challenges.  But as far as handling correction, his overall attitude, and desire towards good, he keeps it pretty easy.  Sometimes we worry that his desire to do good, and avoid all bad is actually the problem.    We've had a couple teachable moments how avoiding problems can sometimes lead to bigger problems, and we've seen a lot of growth in this understanding throughout the year. 

It's confounding to me how this rascally, high energy child is also the most sensitive person in our house.  I see it frequently, but one morning this week he woke up early, made his bed to look like he was in it, and hid behind his door.   I peeked in on him and when I turned to leave after seeing him in his bed, he jumped out from behind his door making me jump and scream.   My heart was pounding and I exclaimed "oh my gosh!  You are horrible!", while laughing and shaking.  He was laughing but then his face fell and he replied "it hurts my feelings when you call me horrible".   He knew it was in jest, we have had these conversations, but he has told me, even when joking it always hurts him when anyone says "bad things" about him.   I immediately apologized and told him he just got me good and he was back to laughing and telling me how he planned it all out.   It's a small example, but the juxtaposition of his feelings with his orneriness is always surprising to me.   

He finally had his first broken bone, well rather, minorly fractured bone.   He climbs the highest trees, walks along edges of any cliff he can explore, tries stunts with his bike, runs with abandon, jumps off the couches, and is constantly going at full speed.   What adventure led to his injury?   Colliding with his friend in a semi made up version of baseball. I cannot express how much this makes me laugh after years of watching him with a tightness in my chest as he took great risks; OF COURSE it's just playing normally with a friend that sends him to the Urgent Care!   Thankfully, it was pretty uneventful and only needed a brace for a few weeks. 

So I think the moment that stands out the most from this year is when he tested for his brown belt.   Once you reach brown belt you are in the "advanced" track for karate, so the testing is no joke.   From brown belt forward it is basically levels of advanced training towards black belt. Every time there is testing for any belt you have to show all the strikes, kicks, and blocks.  You also have to know a series of moves to demonstrate certain self-defense maneuvers and counter attacks.  For example ONE of the ten self-defense maneuvers would be to know if someone tried a "Two hand grab on one arm" he has to step by step perfectly show this response:  Step to side, hand to stomach, reverse grab, hand to elbow, turn stepping back with outside foot to throw.    Also each belt has progressively more difficult katas, this particular kata had some pretty specific steps and detailed moves; then to get your brown belt you have to name and 'perform' something called "Shih Pa Lo Han Sho" aka "18 hands", which the kids start working on every single week from the beginning belts.   To sum it up, it's a lot.   

During testing they call up each group of kids that is testing for each particular belt and have them do their testing together.  They do these in front of their instructors and all the parents in the dojo.   Except this time Zeke was the ONLY kid testing for brown belt, so he had to do ALL of it in front of everyone ON HIS OWN.   I don't think I breathed the entire testing, I was so anxious for him.   He was the last to test as they work up through the difficulty levels, and after brown they do separate testing altogether.  They ask that the parents hold their applause until the end of ALL the testing so they can get through them all, but after Zeke did '18 Hands', the other parents all exhaled and one of them said "yeah, that deserves an applause now" and the other parents all applauded before he even finished testing.   His testing took the longest, and he had a room full of people he didn't know watching, and again, had to do it entirely on his own...and he nailed it!   We are so proud of him persevering under pressure.   He had to grow a lot to get to the point of doing all that by himself when just a year or two before he didn't want me leaving him at karate class because he didn't want to be away from us.

         He has a lot of change ahead of him, and while I get anxious about all the changes, I am reminded that I really am confident in his ability to tackle it all and do great.  He's moving too fast for me to try to hold too tight, and I think in the year ahead, he really is going to to shine.  

Genevieve turning 12!

 

 Ok so 12, our last year until she is "officially" a teen-ager.   What strange times, I don't quite know how to describe it other than "in-between".   She is holding onto the sweet fun of childhood, the joy of storytelling and imaginative play with her brother, while at the same time, preparing and looking ahead at changes that come with the next year.   She is full of anticipation, weariness, excitement, and courage....but that's next year.   And THIS year, this last year leading up to 12, she has continued to grow with insight, reflection, self-awareness, and perseverance.   She sees so many kids her age who are just vying to grow up; meanwhile she is content and happy to be her quirky, eccentric, self who loves wearing decorative masks, ranting on about Greek Mythology, disappearing for hours into her books and wearing as many bright, glittering things as she can.  

    Vi at times can become very anxious.  She has grown so much in overcoming her anxieties and has gained tools to help her adjust her mindset when she has these struggles.   Here's the thing, you would probably never know it.   She is just SO confident when she sets out to do something.   Once she puts her mind to something, even when her parents present hesitations, she sets about doing it.  I could say she's stubborn (she is) but we're going to talk about her perseverance. So it's probably obvious....I'm gonna talk about the triathlon.   

    She was flipping through the JCPRD magazine that comes in the mail with all the programs available.   Have you guys ever looked through that?  There are SO many options!  Swim, chess, volleyball, cooking, yoga, science, art classes....literally everything imaginable....and we have never done any of them.   This girl comes to me and says she wants to do the kids triathlon.   I am reading about it, it's just a one day event, it's a USA Triathlon sanctioned event, and was going to be in August.   I being the encouraging mother I am, automatically told her it was insane.   I told her, you're going to have to train, like really train, in the HEAT of summer.   She did that thing she does and presented all this annoying logic and reasoning and basically talks me into her ideas.  She immediately started her diligent training.

Ok, that was a lie.   She did in fact start swim team, and was totally on board with the plan to bike home so she would get used to biking while in a wet swim suit.  But have you tried running through June and July?   I wouldn't.   She definitely needed encouragement, so I lovingly reminded her this was her brilliant idea and presented all those lovely arguments back to her that she had used to convince me this was a good idea.   If you thought I would only brag about how amazing her training went, well, that's just not what always happened.  Yet DESPITE her questioning her life decisions and being threatened by her parents to make her pay for her own triathlon if she didn't want to train, she pressed on.   Also, this is a good point to add that her dad wants acknowledgment that being the encouraging father he is, he ran miles and miles with her....in the summer....in the heat.   Clearly there's a winner parent here. 

     Sure it's fun to talk about the day of the race, but there was so much leading up to it.  There was the training in the heat of summer, there was the Shawnee 12 mile bike ride we did as a family, there was swim meets, and then there was her first ever concert the week of the race, where she saw her favorite band, Imagine Dragons, and then got Covid.  I literally had worried about this exact scenario, and then it happened.   The good news was when you are training for a race, you generally want to take it easy the week of the event, so we had that covered. 

     Obviously, she recovered in time for the race, and she did amazing.  Even though she had done swim team, swimming in the lake is a whole different ballgame and that part was rough for her, she looked pretty wiped out coming out of the water, but pretty soon a smile crept its way onto her face, and stayed there the entire remainder of the race.  

     So this race, had an entire athlete book/guide or whatever and a video training to watch ahead of time.  Vi, being Vi, read every word and took to heart everything she learned....including the bit where they encouraged you to stay afterward for the awards ceremony to cheer on all the athletes.   Listen, she was under NO pretense of winning anything, she is a slow and steady person, we had told her all along we were all just going to be so proud of her finish, and we were!   All our family who had come loaded up and left, and we told them we were doing the same.  Yet as we were gathering her things to go she begged us to stay and clap for the other athletes.  I was still exhausted from that whole Covid bit, but that other winner parent I mentioned earlier reminded me that this day was for her, so we made a last minute decision to go ahead and stay.   When they called her name as third in her age group I literally yelled "WHAT?!" and we clapped wildly as she went up for her award.   Then there was an awkward pause from the announcers and they said, "hold up a minute".    They huddled to the side and had to do some figuring out and looking at numbers and we were afraid there had been a mistake and she didn't medal after all.   They came back to the mic and asked "is Genevieve Logan still here?" she went up again and they said "we're sorry, but can we take back that medal?"..... Vi told us she immediately was disappointed but as she was removing the medal they immediately finished... "and give you the gold instead?"   This girl got first in her age group and I think we are all still in shock all these months later. 

    

    Of course we are so proud...but not just because of the gold.   But because it was hard.   And because she had so many amazing people who love her cheering her on, but in the end, she really was her own biggest cheerleader.   Also...because it revealed so much about who she is, that she cared more about encouraging others, and that she pushed past her anxieties and fears that I know were swimming around in her head.

        Eleven is an awkward age, some of your friends move on, some just naturally grow apart, and some become closer than ever.   It seems to be an age where you watch your kids become aware of social dynamics and relationship changes and I've watched and listened to her navigate through these changes with grace. She comes to me with observations, and questions about how to to respond in different relationships.  Several times she has confessed she has a hard time not rambling when she starts talking about something she loves, whether it is music, books, Hadestown, or mythical creatures....and she said she tries to catch herself and remember to ask her friends questions too.   She loves to ramble...I suppose she comes by that naturally. She cares about trying to be a true friend, while being authentic to herself.   It's something I continue to hope she never loses, but for now, at eleven, she's doing pretty dang good. 

     She's been having more opinions about deeper topics in life, and you know what?  She should!  She's becoming more aware of this world around her, and she sees so much of it's beauty, but also sees its flaws.  We enjoy watching how she takes in her surroundings and forms her own mindset on matters.

    She is cherishing our last year homeschooling together, and every once in awhile still asks me to keep homeschooling her next year, but I know she's going to do amazing.    Maybe that's my tainted mom lens in which I see things, but that's fine. We are ready to cheer her on at 12, in fact, I think 12 is going to be fine....dare I say great.