I am weary.
CH is upstairs napping.
I am ignoring the kids as they trash the house.
I am numb.
The dishes don’t even bother me.
We spent the morning standing on a field pretending to be excited and freezing our asses off watching our son experience his first ‘real’ SPORTS DAY.
DUN DUN DUUUUN!
Seriously, they need to hire parents of preschoolers and kindergartners or – conversely – the teachers, to come up with slow torture …the military really needs to tap into this.
3.5 hours. Standing on a windy field.
And being that there are NO WINNERS OR LOSERS….we failed to see the whole point. Nobody seemed to want to cheer them on or encourage them to run faster…it was very very weird.
Oh and I have STUNNING photos and video of the event. I do. Really.
But where the FUCK is the usb cord so I can download them.
I did find the power cord for my laptop though…so if I come up with $1300 bucks I can bring my laptop to BlogHer now!
OH and the day started out great too.
We were all prepped for our plan of attack. I had to get Caity to preschool by 8:30 so she could go to a park filled with used condoms and needles fun and thrills of the east side for a picnic.
However, she woke up sick and threw up/horked something FANTASTIC down her shirt and that was that.
She insisted on seeing Adam in his sporting event though and so came along with us and Nana…but soon wilted in the SPECTACULAR May weather and was too cold, so mom and I hustled her home and then I hustled back to find my popsicle husband who was BEYOND the whole fun of the thing and wait it out.
It was like a long march with hula hoops and skipping ropes.
Okay….I really don’t have any good memories of sports day as a kid. I was not athletic and did not have a competitive bone in my body. I did, however, enjoy winning those little ribbons. We had a different colour for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place…..I was always thrilled to just PLACE.
So we learned at a young age about SUCKING at something. But you know what? While I ain’t no sports parent screaming from the sidelines….I think you have to teach SOME sort of competitiveness in kids…you have to teach about what sportsmanship really means AND about trying extra hard so you CAN be first or top or whatever…I do think we are coddling them a teeny bit too much.
The grade one’s and K’s were doing different events from the rest of the school…the older grades did seem a bit more em fiesty..they were split into COLOUR teams. This seemed to cause some fun, but we were too busy watching slow motion egg and spoon races.
We are however prepared for the NEXT event – Adam’s birthday. Place booked, gifts bought, goody bags planned. Just need to order cakes (me bake??) and wrap and make sure kids are actually showing up and we are on like donkey kong!
Joffi says
“I think you have to teach SOME sort of competitiveness in kids…you have to teach about what sportsmanship really means AND about trying extra hard so you CAN be first or top or whatever…I do think we are coddling them a teeny bit too much.”
I was very glad to read that. This ‘nobody loses’ malarkey is, well, malarkey.
Oh, soak your feet; a good hot soak will do wonders 😉
Vered says
Sounds like a rough day.
Pretending to be excited is, unfortunately, part of parenting.
Happy birthday to Adam!
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thordora says
There needs to be a balance-I mean now, to do anything exercise related there needs to be a goal or person to beat or I won’t do it. But no one winning? Horsepoo.
I’m a firm believer in learning to lose. And I remember those bloody ribbons, despite only ever getting participant most days. But the odd time I’d place-GOLD.
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claudia says
I know what you mean… at my kids old school, each colour team earned points based on which colours placed at the individual “events”
At the end of the day they would tally the points and there would be first, second and third ribbons.
It’s not perfect, but it made it a whole team thing. Really cute to see the Grade 4’s screaming and cheering for the kindergarteners just because there were on the same colour team, lol.
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