Swim meet #2

We have survived our first week of swim meets for the summer.  It’s been a bit of a shock to the system to get back into the rigorous schedule.  Tuesdays & Thursdays will be LONG for the next few weeks.  This week we started off with practice (on those days) at 8 am and kept going until Thomas’ final swims around 10 pm.  Whew!

Thursday night’s meet was at Sha-Mel-Lon pool in West Ashley.  Thomas was up first in the Mixed Medley Relay swimming the final leg: freestyle.  By the time he got in the pool, they were already a lap behind the other team, but he did great and he got another second place ribbon.  Here was his swim:

Thomas swims freestyle

Then Parker was up.  He was swimming (exhibition) against two of his best buddies.  He started off strong and then…well, he had to breathe.  We are still working on that part!  It’s all just for fun though, so mission accomplished! He’s in the lane furthest from the camera (Lane 2):

Parker swims freestyle

Then after a little wait, it was time for Thomas to swim butterfly.  He seemed a little tired and his stroke was a bit off (he says his goggles weren’t working right), but he earned a third place ribbon nonetheless.  And Thomas, not known for being uber competitive, was perfectly okay with that!  He’s in the lane closest to the camera (Lane 4) here:

Third place butterfly

Next up was Thomas in the breaststroke.  It’s still not his favorite stroke, but apparently he’s one of the few on his team who is “legal” in it, so he keeps getting put in it “for points.”  When I saw the judge indicate a disqualification, I thought it was Thomas (because it was on Tuesday), but turns out he was okay (and it was the person next to him who stopped midstroke who DQd – even though they finished first!).  So Thomas’ third place finish earned him a second place ribbon because of the other child’s DQ.  He’s in the lane closest to me again:

Third place breaststroke wins second place

For the final event of the night Thomas was in the Freestyle Relay.  He was swimming the third leg and did a great job of moving his team into first place for the final leg (helped a bit by the goggle malfunction of his competitor).  The final swimmer on his relay lost his lead and it appeared our team would settle for second place until we realized the other team DQd on the final leg with an illegal streamline.  So Thomas’ team won first place – but due to some sort of issue at the ribbon table, they ran out of first place ribbons so we have nothing to prove it.    Here’s the video of his leg (he’s in Lane 2, three lanes away from me):

Thomas swims final freestyle relay

I’m glad our first week is in the books.  Parker is just as proud of his two exhibition ribbons as Thomas is of his one 1st place ribbon, 1 3rd place ribbon and five 2nd place ribbons! 

Two more next week!

Swim team 2014

Last night the swim season officially began with our boys.  They were really excited about it.  Thomas was put in four events, so Mommy was a bit nervous about it.  :)

Thomas was put in the opening Mixed Medley Relay (swimming the butterfly leg), then he was assigned to swim individually in the butterfly and breaststroke.  Breaststroke, while he finally has somewhat mastered the mechanics of it, is not his strongest stroke.  We weren't quite sure how that would go, but he was up for it.  Then he was to swim the third of three freestyle legs in the closing Freestyle Relay.  Parker, as one of the 6 & unders, was only to swim one leg of freestyle in an exhibition competition.  So basically, we were in for a long night!

Some of the 6 & unders were quite excited about their big debuts!

 

Meanwhile, Thomas lined up for his opening swim (butterfly in the Mixed Medley Relay).

 

He did GREAT!  It was his best butterfly time to date (26.18 secs...though I think this pool was 25Y, not 25M -- I still think it was his best swim ever!).  Overall though their relay team was bested by the other team, but he earned his second place ribbon and was happy about it (no picture of that ribbon).  Here's a video of his swim.  

 

Next it was Parker's turn for his inaugural swim.  He's still learning the mechanics of freestyle, so I wasn't quite sure how he'd do, but he did great.  He is still learning how to properly take a breath while swimming, but once he gets that down, he will be off to the races! :)  A lady started talking to me just before his start and I sadly missed the beginning of his swim, but here is at least half of it.  He is in the second lane from the top (in the green cap):

He had the biggest smile when he came over to show it off to his adoring fans (his Daddy & me and his Aunt Beth & Uncle Greg)

 

Next up, after a bit of a lull in competition for us, was Thomas' butterfly  (individually).  He seemed a tiny bit tired (it was after 8 pm at this point), but he did well and finished second! Here is that swim.  He is in lane 5 (second lane from the top):

 

After I watched this one, I timed it and his time was 31.10.  Definitely not his best time.  Remember it was 26.18 earlier in the evening.  And, to compare it to the boy who finished first, his time was 26.36.  So yep, if Thomas could get more consistent with his fly, this red ribbon could turn blue.  :)  Either way, he was thrilled and so was (am) I!!!!

 

Next up was breaststroke.  As I said, not his strongest stroke.  He has just been really learning the mechanics of it and due to weather, his own illness and a crazy incident at the Rec Center on Monday, he has had VERY little practice over the last week.  He unfortunately was disqualified right at the end of the swim.  Not sure exactly why but it must have been something with his kick (I hope we find out more at practice today so he can work on it).  The other child swimming for our team was also DQ'd, so not quite our night in that stroke.  Oh well, he wasn't too upset by it.  Here was his swim; he's in lane 2 (from the top of the screen -- you'll see the judge's hand go up (across the pool) right at the end to indicate the disqualification):

Last up was the Freestyle Relay and it was pushing 10 pm.  This, however, is definitely Thomas' strongest stroke.  He had a goggle mishap in the time trials last week and the coaches had to use those times to see who would swim for points last night.  His time was off by at least 5 seconds then, so I'm guessing that's why he swam the other two strokes.  Anyway, the coaches pick the four strongest swimmers in his division (7-8 boys) to swim this relay, so it's an honor that he's in it.  :)  I don't think it was his fastest and best ever, but it was very good and we were all quite proud of him.  Again, his relay team finished second.  Here was Thomas' leg of the relay (he's in Lane 3 -- which is fourth from the top if you can't see the bottom lane):

 We survived the first meet and came home with three 2nd place riboons and one exhibition (well, two including the one from the DQ l -- oops!).  Swim season is officially back in effect, which means late nights and late dinners.  We try not to let him eat too much during the meet, so he only had a half a sandwich there.  But when he got home he finished off his dinner just before bed.  Nothing like dinner at 10:15.  :-{

Here's hoping for a fun season!

Happy birthday Thomas

 Eight years old!  I cannot believe this precious boy has been with us for eight years.  This year his birthday fell on Easter Sunday.  So here he was with his best buddy on his birthday.

 

And here was his lemon cake with edible glitter, as he requested: 

So another year has passed us by.  While some days Thomas can be a bit of a challenge, most of the time he is a sweet-hearted boy who loves his brother dearly (when he's not fussing and bickering with him!).

Thomas likes to think of himself as "the funny guy" and the class clown, and he usually wants others to see him that way too.  He's not really our risk taker, but he loves to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.

 

 He is in second grade this year and it has been a good year for him.  He still excels at reading, but math has been a bit of a challenge for him.  It's not that he's truly struggling in it, he just gets frustrated because it doesn't come as easily as reading does for him.  As he builds up his confidence in his math abilities (i.e. timed addition and subtraction tests) he is doing much better.  Essentially though Thomas' greatest enemy is his own laziness!  His handwriting is sloppy because he's too lazy most of the time to put for the effort to be neater, and math is much the same.  He's doing fine though and his teacher this year has been PERFECT for him.  She's pretty strict with things like handwriting, but she is exactly who he needed to have this year.  She's been working with him and recognizing his strengths and weaknesses and I've been incredibly thankful for her.  I've been able to participate in a few classroom events this year and he really does seem to have a great teacher and a great group of kids in his class.  Here he was when I went with him to see the play Annie last December at the Dock Street Theater.

 

 I can't believe I don't have a picture ready of him reading.  I guess I see him do it all the time and at some point I stopped taking pictures of it.  He leaves books basically anywhere he might need to sit for more than a minute and he is always picking up a book and reading (at the table, on the stairs when we put on his shoes, in the car, in the bathroom, etc.).  It's so interesting to go back and see how he has truly had a love of books since he was big enough to hold a book up for himself.  He used to just stair and the pages and try to remember the words as I had read them to him, and now he just reads and reads and reads.  He'd stay up until midnight reading every night if we'd let him.  I don't know how he never falls asleep reading but he doesn't.  It's crazy.  I wish I could read like he does!

In addition to reading, he loves being outside and doing anything (playing "war" with his neighborhood friends, riding bikes or other wheeled vehicles and playing sports like football).  While we don't let the boys play video games all that often, when they do (particularly when they get to go to a place with larger video games), he does love them.  He especially loves the ones he can "drive."

During the winter time he was a bit obsessed with his dream of some snow and despite several forecasts that seem to indicate it would be possible, we never really saw any enjoyable accumulation.  His best chance was during a fake "snow" event held as a charity fundraiser in Mt. Pleasant.  I've never seen a boy so happy to have a "snowball."

As I was looking for photos to share from my phone, I found this one and thought I'd use it as an opportunity to talk about one of his biggest changes this year.  He here he was months ago playing with one of his favorite foods -- a piece of cheese.

(oops, something happened to the picture...will have to re-upload from my phone later)

Unfortunately, that favorite snack has been removed from his diet.  When he was a baby, even though he never tested positive for a milk allergy, it became quite clear that he could not tolerate it (it caused eczema and GI issues -- spitting up).  He was about 3 when he was finally able to have (cow's) milk, and by then he was so used to soy milk that he didn't like the cow version.  But he did like yogurt and cheese and most especially PIZZA.  But soon after, we realized he was having a new type of GI issue.  Also, I guess somewhere along there, we started noticing he had dry patches of skin that would sometimes bother him and become itchy.  The allergist would treat the eczema and sometimes it would be really bad, so we finally saw a dermatologist.  He prescribed more treatments and ointments for the eczema.  He continued seeing the GI specialist for those other issues.  

To make a long story short, we saw a new GI nurse practitioner after the return of some of the more serious GI symptoms late last year. It didn't take her long to offer her opinion -- he never really outgrew the milk allergy/intolerance.  She said it would explain all of his symptoms.  She sent us back to the allergist for more testing.  And now a little more than a month later, we have found that his symptoms almost disappear when he doesn't have milk.  Also, the skin testing at the allergist revealed a negative to cow's milk, but a positive to casein (the major protein that makes up cow's milk).  Then he had a second round of blood tests and while I have not been able to fully discuss with the allergist, the blood test showed a negative to casein, but a positive (very slight) to cow's milk.

So what does this mean?  It means he is most likely allergic or intolerant of milk.  We hope he will outgrow it, but in the meantime we have turned to a daily smoothie to get a heavy dose of daily fiber, calcium and other nutrients -- without the dairy. 

 

He misses pizza and we allow him to cheat every once in awhile, but it really is making a difference.  Oh, and in related news, the allergist wanted us to further investigate his peanut allergy to try to determine the severity of it.  The findings weren't what we really hoped for, but not too surprising either.  His peanut allergy has worsened to the point that it is highly unlikely he will ever outgrow it, and he is at an increased likelihood of having a severe reaction if ever exposed to peanuts.  Sigh.

In other news, he's pretty busy this season with sports.  Even though I kind of tried to talk him out of it, he wanted to play soccer again (he played it in the fall as well).  He's not the star of the team, but he tries hard and he is improving.  He also asked to be on his school's tennis team (even though he had never picked up a racquet in his life!).  He's having fun with that.

 

He will be starting swim team in a couple weeks, and he also is still active with the cub scouts.  This year he placed first among the wolf scouts in his pack at the Pinewood Derby.  He just missed out on a trip to regionals with his fourth place finish overall.  He was mighty proud.  :)

 

 He is a sweet boy and while sometimes he gives us fits with what I am sure are normal growing pains, in the end he makes us proud more than he makes us crazy.  He has handled his new diet restrictions very well.  One of the things I love most about him is how much he takes care of little ones.  He sometimes tries a little hard to be cool around his buddies, but he is good about looking out for the little ones.  He is funny and charming and I love him so.  

He really is quite interested in plays and acting.  I think he might like to be an actor if I knew anything about that!  We'll just have to see if that remains an interest and go from there.  For now, I'll be happy just to be his date to various plays, like when we went to see Charlotte's Web at the Dock Street Theatre in January:

 

Happy birthday Thomas.  Thank you for all the joy you bring into our lives.  Just try not to let the next eight years pass by so quickly!

Such a dreadful word it cannot even be repeated

Dust, dust.  Wow.  It’s been a while.  Something happened last week though and my mom encouraged me (rightfully) that I must record it.  So here it goes.

In Thomas’ class the teacher tracks their daily behavior on a color chart with clothes pins/clips.  If they do something good (as an individual or as a group), she might tell them to move their clip up.  Everyone starts on green every day.  It can be moved up one spot to blue, then a lighter blue, then purple (and purple is apparently the magical land that few every reach).  Alternately, bad behavior drops the clip down.  The first decrease is yellow, then orange and on down to red (which might lead to a trip to the principal or something). 

So last Thursday Thomas came out of school dragging his feet and with his head dropped, looking quite sullen.  He came over to me and buried his head in my abdomen.  I leaned down and asked if he was okay.  He sadly replied a quiet “yes.”  I asked if someone did something to him or hurt his feelings. “No,” he sheepishly replied.  Then I realized it must be the clip.  I asked him if he had his clip dropped and he got teary.  He mumbled something about how he was trying to be funny and he promised he wasn’t trying to be mean.

Over the next few minutes I managed to get a few more details.  He and a few other boys were playing with some girls at recess and in an effort to be “funny,” the boys called the girls a word that he could not repeat.  Thinking this must be something really obscene, I told him we would talk privately when we got home so he didn’t teach his brother any bad behavior.  Oh, and that was the second bad behavior of the day.  His clip had already been moved to yellow because he was talking during work time.   My chatty boy is always talking.

When we got home I called him into my bedroom and we sat next to each other on the couch.  I asked him to tell me what happened and he started bawling his eyes out.  “Mommy, I promise you I was trying to be funny; I wasn’t trying to be mean!”  I asked him what he said and he just kept going on and on about how he couldn’t tell me.  “I just can’t do it! You are going to be so mad at me, and I promise I wasn’t trying to be mean!”  He was sobbing now and the mystery word was clearly becoming that which could not be spoken.

I begged him to tell me.  He said he just couldn’t do it.  He was clearly ashamed.  He said, “I’m so mad at myself!”  I asked him if he called them fat or ugly or something like that.  “No, Mommy!  I promise!”  I asked him if he said a bad word and he said no.  I was utterly perplexed.

I started telling him that I was almost sure whatever he said was not as bad as he thought it was because as long as he didn’t say a bad word or insult the girls with a mean word, it really couldn’t be that bad.  But still, he would not tell me.  I begged some more.  He’d start to say something and then start weeping again.

Finally my curiosity was killing me.  I asked if I got him some paper if he could write down the word.  After some thought and consideration, he agreed.  So I got some paper and a pencil for him and left the room.  I told him to call me when he was ready for me to return.  A minute later he called me back.  When I got to the room he was hiding under the covers of my bed.  The paper was laying on the sofa.

I picked up the paper, almost dreading what horrifying word I was about to read.  And then I read it.  I had to hold back my laughter with every fiber of me.

The word….was “immature.”  Seriously.  I said it out loud, “Immature?”  He cried out, “Yes mommy, but I promise! I promise I wasn’t being mean.”  “Ummm, okay. Do you know what it means?” I asked. “Yes! It means acting younger than you are.”

I honestly wasn’t even sure how to reply.  I told him if it hurt the girls feelings he has to respect their right to feel how they do, but that it really wasn’t an awful thing to say.

But despite the fact that I minimalized it and tried to reassure him that it wasn’t that bad, he repeated the entire dramatic episode when his Daddy got home and asked how his day was.  I had already quietly told Trey the whole story when he got home (Thomas had run up the stairs and shut himself in his room when he heard his Dad’s car come in the garage).  But Trey acted like he didn’t know, but told Thomas he had to actually say the word if he wanted to go to his friend’s birthday party the next day.  Thomas cried and wailed for at least 10 minutes and insisted that he just could not say the word out loud.

Seriously, some days parenting is tough…and some days you are just trying hard not to laugh and seemingly belittle the things that get your children all worked up.  While part of me was sad to see him so clearly upset when his dad was trying to get him to tell him the story, the other part of me was fighting the laughter.  I had to keep putting my head on the dinner table.

Immature.  Or as he spelled it, “imature.”  Seriously.  Trey was a bit incensed that he got in trouble for it.  Trey’s reaction when Thomas finally said the word out loud. “Really?  That’s it?  Immature?  Well you were right.  Girls are immature.”  HA!

Thomas the reader

I have neglected this blog terribly and I hope to get back to it at some point, but I was just using it as a reference and looking up some information when I came across this blog post that I made more than five years ago about Thomas' love of reading.  He was not yet two.   I've come across similar blog posts in the past.  And for as much as we hope Parker will be as much of a reader as Thomas, I don't know that I have all these posts from his childhood about his love of reading.  That said, Parker is doing just great with his reading.  He just started kindergarten and he is reading Level 1 & 2 books.  I don't know that he'll be ready to move on to chapter books within a month as Thomas was at his age, but he is doing just great either way.

Thomas, on the other hand, just turned in his summer reading logs.  It's not completely accurate because it doesn't count the large number of small books he read to his brother and on his own.  And it doesn't account for the many books he read more than once.  But he read 112 chapter books (some over 300 pages).  His total number of pages read for the summer was over 10,701.  And I, on the other hand, won't confess to how few books I read.  I need to learn by his fabulous example.  He still reads ALL the time and gets very upset when he cannot read as long as he wants.  It's pretty good when taking books away from your child is a punishment.  I hope it always continues!

First swim meet

Thomas had his first swim meet yesterday.  He was pretty nervous!  He was chosen to be one of the four boys in the 7-8 division on his team who were swimming "for points" in the 25M freestyle.  He was competing against boys who were 8 years old and he's only been 7 for not quite two months...so I think he did great!

It was an away meet, and while he is used to diving off the "blocks," they had to dive off the side at this pool.  He still needs some work on that.  You can see while the other boys were hanging out and relaxing before the start, Thomas is the one who practicing his dive form.  I was trying to tell him to relax but he was in his zone!

My video missed the moment of the dive, but he is the swimmer in the fourth lane from the top.  He swam really strong and I think he had his personal best time!

There was a little mix-up in his ribbon at first, so I didn't get a picture with him and the right ribbon until we were dressed to leave, but here's our happy guy, beaming with his 4th place ribbon!

 

He had a great time, and he told me when we were leaving that he already knows he wants to do swim team next year and the year after that!  Coming from Thomas, our non-sports-oriented child who seems to quickly tire of practice and games, this says a lot.  We are in hour-a-day practices now (five-six days a week), so it's a good thing he loves it!

Little fish

Thomas recently finished his first season of machine-pitch baseball.  He improved throughout the season just like he did in each of his one seasons played in t-ball and coach pitch, but I don’t know if he’ll want to play again (granted, he said that after coach pitch and yet he changed his mind).  Baseball, soccer…they are not sports that seem to come naturally to him and while he sticks them out, I don’t know that I’d say he enjoys it.

So in the quest to find the sport that Thomas might actually enjoy, I signed him up for swim team this year.  I was worried it was going to be too much of a time commitment, and if he hated it, it would be an absolute power struggle making it to practice five days a week.  But I also knew there was a chance he would love it.  And he does.

On days we had baseball games and swim practice,  I begged him to skip swimming and just focus on baseball, but he wanted to swim.  He has improved his freestyle stroke (and is still working on getting better!), learned a proper backstroke and been introduced to the breaststroke and butterfly.  Strangely enough, he has really picked up on the butterfly more quickly than others on the team.  I am completely confused by the stroke, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised and impressed.

Next week they start their official “meets.”  There will be eight of them – though the first is a “mock meet” that will serve the purpose of being an official time trial to see which kids will race in the meet.  Not all children will swim for points at each meet, but each child is guaranteed to swim competitively at least twice.  Thomas is hoping he gets to swim (for points) more than twice, so he is working hard at being the fastest.

They had practice trials at practice yesterday (they were also learning how to dive off the blocks at the same time).  This was the third time Thomas did it and I videoed it because I realized the first two times he was finishing long before the other children who jumped in at the same time.  In this video, I missed the part where he dove off the block and he didn’t finish as quickly as the other times, but he still was first.  He is the swimmer in the third lane from the top.

Thomas at swim practice

Before swim practice yesterday, he had a private lesson with his swim coach to work on his freestyle technique.  I didn’t make this video until the end of the lesson, so at this point he had been swimming for nearly 30 minutes and was understandably tired.  Even so, you can see how he is doing (though he was doing a better job of not “slapping” the water a bit earlier in the lesson).

Swim lap at the end of swim lesson

The pool lap is 25 meters.  Thomas is doing well, and he continuously improves.  Best of all, he loves it.  I’m excited to see if he still feels that way when we start meets next week…and hour-long practices 5 days a week (will replace the 30 minutes we’ve been doing since the first of May).