Formal introductions...

Face Meet Pavement

Pavement Meet Face

The athlete was introduced to a new foe on Christmas day riding a friend's bike.  He hit the brakes a little too hard and went up and over the handle bars and landed on his face.  First biking accident ever, not bad for being 11 and a 1/2 years old.  Now that formal introductions have been made, we hopefully won't be making them again in this house!

Hot cocoa anyone?

I love me a good cup of hot cocoa.  It's one of the many holiday traditions that we have. 

We decorate the tree and drink hot cocoa.

We go to the Santa parade and we buy hot cocoa at Dunkin Donuts beforehand.

Every year when we watch the Polar Express for the first time? 

You guessed it.  We drink hot cocoa.

You could say it's a staple here in our house starting in December and carrying through the cold winter months as well. This year it's been even better because the athlete can make it for himself and his sister using the microwave.  A little milk or water in a mug, (I don't use water in mine.  I think it's nasty that way!)  A packet of your favorite hot cocoa mix, give it a stir and you're good to go.

Yesterday afternoon I promised the kids they could both have a cup as a treat after they finished their homework.  I made some for the princess and when the athlete finished he quickly went right to work in the kitchen making his own. 

"Mmmmmm, yummy", he declared as he carried his own mug into the livingroom.  "Hot cocoa is so much better with milk than water."  (For some reason he has always insisted on making his with water instead of milk.  Apparently he decided to take my word for it and give milk a shot.)  "I tried to tell you", I said with a smug little smile on my face. 

Moments later I went to the kitchen feeling a little victorious over the fact that the athlete decided to try something I had suggested.  He's at that age when he thinks he knows everything and God forbid his mother suggests something.   Normally his response is an automatic no. Just because it came from me.

My smile quickly faded when I saw this:

Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture. 

Yes, that is MILK in my Keurig machine.  The athlete replaced the water with milk in the holding tank and brewed himself a delicious cup of hot cocoa, thanks to the fabulous suggestion of his mother.  It took me 11 brew cycles to flush the Keurig and stop getting a gray mixture of milk and water out of my expensive coffee machine.

Me and my big mouth.  I should have just let him stick with water and leave well enough alone.  Lesson learned.

Give and take...

I have a son.

That son of mine is growing up.

He is not a baby anymore.

I. am.  the.  parent.  of.  a.  tween.

I got through the newborn stage, the toddler/preschool stage.  The school age stage.  With each came new challenges, new obstacles to overcome, new parenting techniques and strategies.  But also great joy and a sense of pride at seeing my child grow, learn, and succeed.

This new stage, the "tween years"?  By far the most difficult yet.  It's a confusing time.  A time hard to define exactly because your child is not a baby anymore but not a full blooded teenager yet either.

You get glimpses into the future and you can see where they're headed and what it's sort of going to be like parenting a teenager, but there a times when it is quite clear that your child is still just a child who needs a parent's guidance and help to navigate through the challenges of adolescence.

Case in point:  The athlete came home from school on Friday begging to go to the varsity football game later that night.  He has never asked to go to a football game before, so me being the intuitive mother that I am knew there was more to it than a new found interest in high school football.

Upon further digging, I discovered that it was going all around the 6th grade that day that "Everyone", was going.

We decided to let him go.  We even let him invite a friend.  We did however tell him we would only be staying till half time.  He was ok with that and just happy to be going.  We got to the game and we gave him a couple of strict rules to follow.
1.  Stay with your friend

2.  Check in with us in one hour.

3.  When it's time to go, it's time to go.  We don't want any arguments.

He nodded in complete agreement.  Or so we thought.

Strike one came after one hour past with no check in from the athlete.  We went in search for him and sure enough we found him with his group of friends, running around and joking with them all.  We had to call him over and give him a warning about not checking in.  His reply, "Sorry, I forgot".

We let it slide and reminded him we were leaving at half time.  We told him to meet us at the bleachers when it was time to leave.

Strike two:  Half time arrived and after 10 minutes, no appearance from the athlete.  Again we went in search for him.  This time not so forgiving.  The princess found him first and ran up to him telling him it was time to go.  He was with a group of girls so he ignored her.  

His friend?  Not with him but with a group of their soccer friends several yards away.
Strike three.  You're out.

The coach walked right into the middle of all those girls, told him to say goodbye NOW took him by the arm and away we went.  Utter embarrassment for the athlete.  He came to the car after retrieving his friend, and was all annoyed and red in the face.  We dropped his friend off and once we were alone in the car we let into him.

No phone, no friends, no next home football game.  We reviewed what the specific instructions for the night had been and how the athlete proceeded to NOT follow each and every one of them.  Followed up by an explanation about how he constantly wants us to allow him more freedom but he makes it very hard for us and himself.  When we give him a little leeway and he doesn't follow the rules it breaks our trust and shows us that he isn't ready yet.

We got no argument after that.  That's one thing I will say about him.  When he knows he's wrong, he shuts up and accepts whatever consequences we dish out.

What was suppose to be a fun night for all of us ended in disappointment for everyone, except the princess, she was happy as a clam!  The athlete went to bed disappointed that he can't go to the next home game. We returned home slightly disappointed and upset that he wouldn't just follow a few simple rules.  Now we have to wait some time before we can allow him to spread his wings, even just a little, and watch with pride as he succeeds at this in between stage they call the tween years.

Do you have a tween?  How do you get through the day to day challenges?

It was time for a cellphone...

A friend of mine IRL wrote a blog post a while back about getting her tween a cellphone.  You can read her thoughts here:   Why texting is not a bad thing for my tween 

I could really relate to what she had written and it played a part in the reasons why we decided to get our tween son a cell phone for his 11th birthday this past summer.

Now for those of you who know me IRL, I have always been adamant that my children would never have a cell phone until they were much older, until it was a necessity.  I am one of those moms that says to my children constantly, "just because someone else has it doesn't mean you will".

But somewhere down the road my attitude changed and I agreed to give it a try.  Worst case scenario, we take it away and try again in a year or two.

It has been 3 months since we gave him his phone and to be honest, I love the fact that he has it.  It allows him to have a little bit more freedom, but added security for mom and dad.

I love that I can let him go to a friend's house and know that I can text him or he can text me anytime either of us feels like it.  I can check in on him and he doesn't have to be embarrassed that his mother is calling his friend's house to make sure he's doing ok.

Even more importantly, he knows that if he is ever somewhere and doesn't feel safe for any reason, he can call or text me privately and tell me to come get him.  He never has to be in an awkward situation or feel uncomfortable or even afraid to call me immediately, if he needs outta there.

Some of you may say that you know your child, and you have brought them up in a way that assures you that in a given situation your child would call you right away if they were not comfortable or unsafe.

I was one of those moms.

Until the day my son came home from a friend's house and said he never wanted to go back.  I was surprised  because I had met the mom several times and was very confident that it would be a safe environment for my child.

What I didn't know was that  the parents were both heavy smokers and smoked in their home.  (They never actually lit up with him in the house), but they had ashtrays filled with crumpled butts in every room of their home and the smell was over powering.

The athlete came home reeking of cigarettes, had a headache and felt like he was going to throw up.  I asked him why he didn't call me and ask to come home.  Do you know what his reply was?  "I didn't want to hurt their feelings, mom."

He was more afraid of upsetting them than he was of getting out of a house that was making him physically ill. It was right then and there I told him, "If for any reason you need to leave a home, whether it be unsafe, or something happens that scares you, or you just don't feel comfortable being there, than you tell the parents that you don't feel well and you need to call your mother to come get you and bring you home."

I felt so bad that he endured that for 4 hours!

Never again.

With his cell phone and through our talks,  I am even more confident that he will reach out to me if he needs me any place or time.  The pressure is off of him and the odds of him calling are more in my favor.  That right there makes it all worth it.

Another plus, he knows it can be taken away at any time for any one of these reasons:

First,  he doesn't answer or get back to us within minutes of us calling or texting him.

Second,  he uses it inappropriately while texting.  (We monitor his texts, and no I'm not stupid or naive.  I know he can and will erase anything he says that qualifies and inappropriate.  But he also knows that at anytime his father or I can pick up his phone whether it's in his hands or lying around somewhere and read through his messages.)

Third,  it will, and has, been taken away as a consequence when he does something really wrong, or decides to get wise during an argument.  On the flip side, it also has stopped or prevented many a melt down from him when you simply threaten to take his phone away.  (That's just an added bonus in my book!)

Now this part is really important:   I'm not saying that a cell phone can take the place of smart parenting,  in some instances they may give parents a false sense of security.  As with anything that pertains to your child and his or her safety be smart.  Make wise choices based on your individual child.  What might be right for one child may not be for another.  But in our case, it does help us as parents to be able to let go "a little" and give our tween the opportunity for a bit more freedom and navigate his way through this scary world of growing up.

The things we do for our children

I will warn you now that while this is a story of just how far a mother will go for a child, it's also a very disgusting  tale, so for the squeamish at heart, I'm  warning you this might not be the story for you.  You might want to think twice before reading.

There, now that I've warned you,  I won't feel guilty getting into the gory details a little later on.

Our lovely little tale begins this past Monday morning.  I go to clean our pet rats cage and so I hand each of the kids their pet rat.  Instantly the athlete calls me back in to see something on "Flash's" back.  I go in thinking I'm gonna see a couple of scratches or something.  (Flash is a hairless rat and more prone to scratches.)  This is him in the pic below with his cage mate  "Baby".  He's the one on top.

***Warning, Warning***   Beginning to enter gross territory!

I pick him up and see what appears to be a big infected abscess on his back leg and another smaller, hard bump with a black center on his back.  I explained to the athlete it looked like he had an infection but I made sure to tell him that I didn't really know what they were or where they came from.  I told him it might not be anything but there was a chance it could be something serious.  I wasn't about to lie to him and tell him everything would be alright because I had no idea what we were dealing with.  I did feel confident though that it wasn't anything to worry about.

I made a vet appointment for later in the day and went on about my business.  (We are leaving for vacation on Saturday and as if I didn't have enough to do already, now I have a sick rat on my hands!)

The athlete however brewed and worried all day.  (He inherited this from me.)  He thought worse case scenario and was already talking about burying the poor thing in the back yard!  I calmed him down several times throughout the day and at 5:00pm we headed to the vets.  He insisted on coming but I wasn't too keen on the idea.  On the off chance something was seriously wrong I didn't want him breaking down in the middle of the exam room.

Long story short, (or sort of!!), I'm told he has some form of tumors and more than likely they are cancerous. The larger of the too is infected.  My options?  Ready for this?  I can have a biopsy taken and sent to a pathologist and then have him operated on to remove the tumors all to the tune of $375 -$475.  Or I can bring him home, treat the infection with antibiotics and when it's his time put him down.

Since the average lifespan of a hairless rat is 2 to 3 years and Flash is approaching 2, the biopsy and surgery wasn't even an option for me.  I packed him up and joined the athlete out in the waiting room.  During the exam I didn't like the look on the vet's face so I wisely sent him to wait for me out there.  (Thank God!) I was able to wait until we got in the car to break the sad news to my son.

He cried instantly and went through all kinds of different emotions.  He was angry, sad, in denial.  You name it, he felt it.  He cried out through sobs that he would never get another pet again because they all die.  He yelled at me, he yelled at everything.  He vowed to give Flash the best life possible for however many days he had left.  I fought back tears driving home and felt an ache in my heart for my sensitive, sweet little man.

That night I sat with him in his bead, dried more tears, and soothed him to sleep.  I was grateful to see him finally sleeping but it hurt watching his little body still shaking in his sleep from all the crying he had done.

The next day I decided to do some research on the web because his diagnosis just wasn't sitting right with me.   I had a hard time believing they were tumors.  I know I'm not a veterinarian, but I just had a gut feeling and as a mom, you learn to trust your gut over everything else.

After 45 minutes of web searching, while I should have been preparing for vacation mind you, I stumbled upon a rat breeder website.  This woman went into great detail, providing pictures and descriptions of common problems with pet rats.  The three topics that caught my eye were:  tumors, abscesses, and subcutaneous cysts.

***Warning  Warning***  Now were at the really nasty part!!!!

I read and looked at all the pics of tumors, nothing on there looked anything like what Flash had.  Same thing with the abscesses.

Then I get to subcutaneous cysts and I see a picture of a hairless rat with something that  looks exactly like what Flash has on his back, the one with the black center.  She describes how male hairless rats are very prone to these because they secrete a lot of oil and have no hair to absorb it.  The black center is dirt that is trapped in the middle.  (Basically it's like a giant blackhead, the epitome of nasty!)

To get rid of it,    can you guess?  

You squeeze it just like a zit.   (She provided photos of this as well, sick I know, but very useful!)  As I'm reading all this and soaking it in,  my heart is beginning to lighten and I start to get excited!
Not about what I'm thinking about doing, but at the fact that I might just be able to take my son's sorrow away and end up saving the day.

As luck would have it, she also provided a picture of an infected cysts and what to do about that.  Basically the same thing you do to the first, but you need to make sure the rat is on antibiotics as well.  Flash was on antibiotics so I had that part covered too!

I took a deep breath and thought it over.  I didn't have any other option.  I had to at least give it a whirl.  Worse case scenario, I was wrong, best case, I save my son from the suffering of having his pet die of cancer.

I grabbed my supplies:  some tissues, paper towel, bacitracin, Q-tips, and a hand towel.  I retrieved Flash from his cage, set him on my lap in the towel, and took a really deep breath.  I started with the one that wasn't infected, tissues in hand I applied a gently squeezing pressure on both sides and instantly thick, squiggly stuff shot straight out of it like I was squeezing a tube of toothpaste.  (I am laughing as I type this, remembering just how flipping nasty it all was!  I have never been so happy to see shit squeeze out of something in all my life!)

I was more nervous about the bigger, infected one, but managed to repeat the procedure.  The second time was a little more than I could handle and after finishing, I quickly handed the rat off to the athlete and had to put my head between my knees and take a few deep breaths.  The sheer grossness of what I had just done, had sunk in and I was super close to fainting.

When I felt it was safe to sit back up I excitedly informed the athlete that I was 99% sure that Flash did not have cancer and what it actually was were cysts.  I even showed him the website where I found all the information.  I told him that I thought Flash was going to be just fine.

The look on his face was worth squeezing a thousand of those suckers!   He leaped up grabbed me and hugged me tight, saying "thank you mom, thank you so much!", over and over.  He told me I was a hero and it was the best day of his life.  And that right there, was exactly why I put the effort in, and did what I did.  It was all worth that smile and look in his eyes.

He's good with numbers...

 I always wondered in the back of my mind when this time would come.

It has taken just under 11 years.

Sometimes, I'm surprised that it has taken this long.

It began several days ago when the athlete approached me when we were all alone and made a random comment while I was on Facebook.  He said to me:  "Mom, you and Dad are really young.  Most of my friends in school have parents that are in their 40's."

Feeling flattered, I replied, "Well yes, that's true.  Dad and I are not as old as most of your friends parents."

That was followed up by him with, "Why?"

I explained that Dad and I met when I was still in college and we loved each other so much we decided to get married and have children at a young age.  (I was 23 to be exact and the coach was 25.  So it's not like we are talking about teen parents or anything, just younger parents.)

That answer seemed to suffice, or so I thought.  He walked out of the room and I went on about my business.  About 5 minutes later he came back and blurted out, "You and Dad had me before you got married?"

That gave me pause.  I quickly ran through things in my head.  I always knew the day would come when he would put 2 and 2 together.  I just wasn't expecting it at that moment.

What tipped him off?

This picture was given to us by my mother-in-law for our 10th anniversary last year.



It wasn't the picture itself,  it was what was below it:


Now the athlete was born on July 1st 2000 and it doesn't take a genius to calculate that if we were married in September of 2000 that he had already  made his appearance into the world and was actually 3 months old on our wedding day.

He told me that he looked at the date on the plaque and basically did the math.   I explained to him that sometimes God has other plans for us and that even though the "right" order of things is to fall in love, get married, and then have children, sometimes it doesn't always happen that way.  (But, I reinforced that it should!)


I anxiously waited, while he processed all the info, afraid of what his next comment might be.  My fears were quelled when he simply shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Well, I'm glad I have young parents. You guys are cool."  He followed that up with a hug!

I breathed a huge sigh of relief, glad that the conversation was over and felt pretty darn good about being a young, cool mom!

He nailed it...

Update from this post yesterday.

The parents got to go in  to school this morning to view all the 5th graders project boards for the Interest Fair and see if they won a ribbon from the judging yesterday.  They all were judged on their presentations and based on that as well as their boards and their essays,  they had a chance of winning a ribbon.

We walked into his class and there was the athlete standing so proud and tall with a huge crap-eating grin on his face and pointing to his "honorable mention" ribbon hanging from the top of his board.

HE NAILED IT YESTERDAY!!!!!!

The teachers all told me he was amazing during his oral presentation and was able to answer any question thrown at him.

 I am one super thrilled and proud mama today!  Every time I think about it and see his little face in this picture,  I can't stop smiling!!  It's moments like these that make the craziness of the last few weeks ALL WORTH IT!!

Here he is at school today.  He was so happy to receive a blue honorable mention ribbon!  He was even sporting his Jimmy Fund pin on his shirt!

His completed project and awards

Oral presentations...

At long last, the day has arrived.  Today is the day of the athlete's Interest Fair.  It's the big to do project of the 5th grade.  He has been working on this for the past 2 months.  The entire thing consists of 3 parts...

An essay on the subject

A huge, three sided poster board project

And an oral report, explaining your topic

With much screaming, arguing, and nagging from me, the essay was completed and turned in on Monday morning.

This past week we have worked for hours finishing up the final touches on the poster board presentation.  We printed, we cut, we organized, we glued, and we labeled.  The final poster ("Rocked!"), in my unbiased opinion.

The scariest part for him:   the oral presentation.  He is judged on how well he knows the information presented, how loud and slowly he talks, and the kicker...

how clearly he speaks.  Here's his dilemma:

How clearly would you speak with all this junk in your mouth?

He practiced his report over and over in front of the coach and I last night.  He was stressed to the max and worried about not getting a good grade because of the way he speaks.  (It didn't help that I started giggling during one of his practice runs.  It was really poor judgement on my half, I was only trying to lighten the mood. It backfired terribly.)  The coach spent the next half hour building his confidence back up and I helped him with his notes.


He left this morning, confident as ever,  ready to tackle the day.  I am so proud of him.  I know he's gonna knock em' dead, mouth full of metal or not!

Before and after

Here is the athlete on Saturday, looking bushier than ever.....

    

And here he is on Sunday after a good haircut given by my multi-talented husband!

   

Saves us a fortune the way his hair grows!!