Look, Mom, no anxiety!

The other night as I was putting Paul to bed, he looked over at me and excitedly said, "Hey, Mom, guess what? I got rid of my anxiety!" If a 5-year-old talking about anxiety sounds strange to you, let me explain. When Paul was in the throes of feeling majorly fearful about starting kindergarten, Mark and I did some reading. We came across an article that recommended referring to anxiety by its actual name and encouraging kids to "tell their anxiety to be quiet." So we told Paul that when he felt afraid of something, he should ask himself if it was indeed something scary and if it wasn't, he should tell himself that it was anxiety talking and that it needed to be quiet.

Whether our techniques helped or if it was just simple repeated exposure to his fears that helped alleviate the problem, I'm not sure. What I do know is that the kid has come a long way. From the time he started preschool, Paul had major separation anxiety. I'm not just talking tears when it was time for me to leave. I'm talking big tantrums with snot coming out his nose and sometimes him clinging to me and running after me as I left. Last year, his second year in preschool, was better but still not great. Needless to say, I anticipated a pretty bumpy start to full-day kindergarten.

What I got instead was an unbelievably pleasant surprise. Paul has done a 180. He goes to school happily every day. I thought taking the bus home would be a big problem, but after one or two days of angst, his bus ride home is now one of his favorite parts of the day. And I've not only seen changes in how he feels about school. I've watched him become much less fearful in general and more independent. I still can hardly believe the transformation.

Maybe Paul could teach me a thing or two. Believe me, I know anxiety. I've been a worrier and an obsessive over-thinker for as long as I can remember. Anxiety is such a pernicious little bugger. Rationally, I know that worrying does me no good and in fact can take a real toll. Knowing that, however, does nothing to release its grip on me when I'm going through an anxious period. I've lost whole days and even weeks consumed with worry. The good news is that my anxiety ebbs and flows. I go through anxious periods, and then my brain just eventually realizes that whatever I'm worried about isn't a real threat and I'm free of it, at least until some other worry creeps in.

After years of dealing with angst, I've come to accept that it's just a part of me, and I've learned to cope with it. I try to eat right, I exercise, I try to take some quiet time each day. And when things are really challenging, I take a deep breath and go back and read this quote from Marcus Aurelius: "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

Phew, all this talk about anxiety has me worried about exactly what genes I'm passing down to my kids. No, that's just the anxiety talking. Be quiet now.

What I'm thankful for

It can be easy to lose sight of the fact that if you live here, chances are you are abundantly blessed compared to the majority of the rest of the world. That's one of the many things I love about Thanksgiving: it gives me an opportunity reflect.

I'm endlessly thankful for my husband. A better partner I could not find. He is a kind, loving, smart man, and, most importantly for me, he puts up with all my neuroses. And while I'm on Mark, I'm thankful for his job that is fulfilling for him and allows him to provide for our family. I'm lucky to be able to say that. I know that so many are struggling right now.

I'm thankful for my kids. They are clever, hilarious, naughty, and chances are they will end up driving me crazy on any given day. But they're mine, and I simply adore them. Again, I realize how fortunate I am to have three healthy, happy boys.

I'm thankful for my family. Mark and I are so blessed to both come from families that are loving and supportive. Our parents are second to none, and we feel so grateful knowing that we can always count on them. I am fortunate to have three brothers, five brothers-in-law, eight sisters-in-law, and eleven nieces and nephews (with one on the way!). I love each and every one.

I'm thankful for living in a community we love, for a great school with great teachers, for our church community, for a comfortable home that keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I could go on and on. Like I said, we are abundantly blessed to live in a place where we have freedom and opportunities. 

I hope you take the opportunity to count your blessings, too, and have the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Battlefield dinner table

The past two nights I have served my boys the most horrific meals. Yes, horrific, if you take Paul's word for it, anyway. Sunday night, it was lemon chicken. Paul took one taste and gagged - literally gagged. "This tastes horrible!" he moaned. To get it down, he made a slurry of ketchup and mustard in which to dip the vile chicken.

Last night, however, I outdid myself. I had made a casserole with rice, refried beans, cheese, salsa, corn and spinach. This time, he didn't even need to taste it before he declared it awful. "This is horrible!" he wailed again. "Why, Mother, why? What hath thou wrought? Why hath thou forsaken me?" Seriously, you would have thought I'd beheaded his pet rabbit and served it to him on a plate. OK, so I may have embellished his quotes a little bit, and he doesn't really have a pet rabbit,  but it was outrage on that level. I had offended him, deeply, with my offering.

I never know the right course of action in these situations. In the past, I've broken every rule in the book regarding kids and eating: bribery, threats, I'm ashamed to say I've tried it all. I know experts say not to battle on this one. Kids will eat when they're hungry. Keep presenting healthy foods, and eventually kids will start to embrace them. File those under easier said than done.

I like to think I'm pretty reasonable with my eating expectations.  Being a recovering picky eater myself, I'm empathetic to the boys' food dislikes and suspicions. I give them outs on foods they really don't like. If I make something they dislike and they try it and calmly tell me they don't like it, I've been known to let them eat peanut butter bread or cold cuts in lieu of the dinner I've prepared. The problem is, they usually don't tell me calmly, they go right to whiny. And when whiny comes out, I tend to dig in my heels.

Something tells me I'm in for several more years of mealtime battles. I'd better make sure I, at least, stay fortified. If you'll excuse me, think I'm going to go heat up some of that heinous casserole for myself.

Scenes from school

This week and last, I had the opportunity to spend sometime with Ben and Paul's classes. Last Wednesday, I chaperoned Ben's field trip to Madison, where the fourth-graders visited the Capitol and the Vilas Zoo. The kids were great, overall, but one thing I noticed is that they love to say the word "dude." A lot. I didn't realize it had made such a big comeback.

One of the things that struck me most watching the kids was that for the most part, they're all still nice to one another. No one, that I could see, was teased or set as an outcast. It made me sad in a way knowing that the inevitable social caste system, in which some kids will rise to the top while others will be deemed untouchable, will emerge in a mere year or two. How I wish kids could hold on to their sweetness.

Yesterday, I paid a visit to school to help with Paul's class's Halloween party. Before the party got under way, the kids had a Halloween assembly in the gym. The principal called out groups of kids by the costumes they were wearing, and the kids ran into the center of the room and did a little dance. I was amazed as I watched Ben and Paul happily run out and dance. It's something I never would have done. I would have pegged Paul, for sure, as refusing to go out.

When we got back to Paul's classroom, I was further astounded to see how much he has grown in a year. Last year in preschool, he stuck to me like glue every time I was in his classroom. He wasn't very social, was pretty much a loner, I thought. But yesterday, sure, he was happy to have his mom visit school, but that didn't stop him from sitting down with three other boys and making up a game to play with cars. I've never been so happy to be ignored.

Parents tend to label their kids. I know I do. I'm happy to learn that sometimes our kids surprise us in the best possible ways.

If you can't beat 'em ...

Over the last week or so, Ben has shown increased  interest in watching SportsCenter. He discovered fantasy football this fall and is known to walk around the house mindlessly tossing a ball, be it base or foot. All of this serves to further highlight my status as odd woman out. I've never been much interested in sports. As I've written, that attribute has already put me in second place for at least one child's parental affections.

My distaste stems from a couple places. First of all, go ahead and lay in to me sports fans, but I pretty much think watching sports is boring. Watching sports on TV, in particular, usually is guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over. More than anything, however, I simply cannot understand some people's infatuation with, say, how the Packers are doing. Yes, I'm one of those annoying people who grouses about the Packers being on the front page of the newspaper. In the days when I still worked in an office, I hated how a Packers loss could turn everyone's Monday mood sour.

How poetic then, that I would end up in a family of sports fanatics. To his credit, Mark is great about balancing priorities. He loves the Badgers, Brewers and Packers (in that order), but he's willing to sacrifice watching games if something more important arises. We've got a pretty good compromise going. I'll give up watching an episode of "Project Runway" to watch the Brewers in the playoffs with him.

With my sports agnosticism, I couldn't be more surprised by how heart-heavy I felt when the Brewers lost their chance to make it into the World Series. I had gone to three games with Mark this season, including the division-clinching game. I had followed the team, albeit casually. Suddenly, though, I felt myself swept away in a wave of Brewer pride and hope. What had I become? Was I actually caring about a sports team?

OK, so you couldn't really say I'm a sports convert. But it's a step, right? If this is my lot in life, I might as well embrace it. But becoming a Packer fanatic? Forget about it.

My comeuppance is coming at me fast and furious these days

On Saturday afternoon, we and, judging by the volume of cars in the parking lots, roughly 10 percent of the population of the Fox Cities took in the beautiful fall day and decided to head to High Cliff. The picture above illustrates how well it went - Ben's face in particular. Though Gus, in his typical good-humored fashion, had a fine time, Ben and Paul made it abundantly clear that they were in no mood for an afternoon hike.

We hadn't gotten more than a couple hundred yards into our hike before my two eldest asked if we could turn back and go home. Then the whining kicked in full force. Their feet were killing them. They simply couldn't go on. They were dying, literally dying, from the heat and the lack of water. Oh what irresponsible parents were we to have left the water in the car! "We've been doing this for two hours, when will be done?" Ben moaned about 20 minutes into our trip. "Hiking is about the journey, not the destination," I intoned with mock sincerity. Would you guess my wisdom had no impact on how they felt? The ill-fated venture culminated in us beating a hasty retreat after a meltdown from Paul about Gus drinking more than his share of water and furor at me for leaving an oak leaf he really, really wanted sitting on a picnic bench.

Taxing though the day was, I couldn't help feeling I had somehow gotten what was coming to me. At some park roughly 27 years ago, I likely was behaving the exact way my boys did, if not worse. Though I thoroughly enjoy hiking now, back then I remember clearly thinking it was a pointless waste of time. Through my vocal dissatisfaction, I'm sure I successfully managed to quash any and all of my companions' hopes for a Waldonesque commune with nature.

If you haven't guessed already, I wasn't an easy child. I was often sullen, if not downright surly at times. I presented my parent with a veritable panoply of challenges. I was an extremely picky eater. Despite my mom's best attempts, probably more than I deserved, to make food that would appeal to me, I turned my nose up at almost everything. My mom must silently laugh to herself every time she sees one of my boys do the same to me. Paul's tantrums that vex me so? Yeah, I had a lot of those myself, too.

With all the karmic payback that was headed my way, I should have realized that becoming a parent would be an extremely risky endeavor for me. Even with all of that, I don't think any of my kids are as difficult as I was. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that people change, even cranky kids like me. I love hiking, have much broadened my eating horizons and rarely have any more tantrums. ;) Just to be on the safe side, though, Ben and Paul should watch out. You know what they say about payback.

Happy birthday, big Ben!

I guess it's kind of a slow realization, the one that your child has progressed from kid to big kid. The boy who once  needed you for everything from getting dressed to shoe tying is suddenly independent. He no longer needs you to read books at bedtime - he'd rather do it himself. In the pie chart that is his sphere of influence, your parental slice has begun to grow smaller while his peers' share steadily increases.

Ben turns 9 on Wednesday, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how that's possible. Veteran parents always warn new parents to enjoy the time, that it goes quickly. Mostly, it doesn't feel that way when you're in the middle of it, but milestone moments like birthdays usually work nicely put things in perspective. Those veteran parents are right.

If you'll forgive me being an insufferable braggart for a moment, I must say, Ben is special kid. At the age of 4, Ben taught himself to read and soon was doing so fluently. Soon after, he was able to add two-digit numbers. I wish Mark and I could take credit for this, but we can't. It's all him. At the end of first grade, when we came to the realization that Ben's abilities were outpacing his grade level, we reached the difficult decision to have him skip a grade. What we asked of Ben required a lot of courage on his part. Not only did Ben survive the change, he thrived.

Ben amazes me. He isn't a tall kid to begin with, but being younger than his peers puts Ben about a head shorter than most other kids. But Ben loves to run and play sports. Through his sheer determination, he ensures that he excels in whatever he pursues. It inspires me.

Happy birthday, Ben! I celebrate you today and every day.

I'd like to close with the lyrics to a song, "You and Me" by Frances England. The first time I heard it, it undid me with its simple, beautiful words that capture so perfectly what it's like to bring up a child. I highly recommend you download it, but be ready to dissolve into a puddle of tears.

You and me, happy as can be
Flying through the park on our bikes
On a Sunday afternoon

You and me, rolling on the floor
Practicing your somersaults, cartwheels,
Your donkey kicks and more…

How did you grow so big overnight
How did you get so smart and bright
Yesterday you were asleep in my arms
Today you’re growing off the charts

I’m so proud of you

You and me, drawing pictures wild and free
While the paint goes flying,
Your big smile brightens up the room

You and me, reading books in bed
Your head on my shoulder,
Your eyes on the pages ahead

How did you grow so big overnight
How did you get so smart and bright
Yesterday you were asleep in my arms
Today you’re growing off the charts

I’m so proud of you