Month: November 2014

It’s 8:45pm on a cold November night. The tech rehearsal has been going since 4pm, and I’ve been at the theater since 11am. My shoulders have inched gradually up to hover around my ears. The cast is running the finale with lights and sound, and in my capacity as assistant director, I’m sitting next to the director taking dictation of her notes. In pairs and small groups, the cast converges from various points to hit their final stage picture. All is going well until… My 6-year-old son doesn’t enter on cue, leaving a gap. We stop, and the director calls his name. The stage left Stage Manager calls back that she can’t find him. I’m half annoyed, half alarmed. After a pause, the stage right Stage Manager sticks her head out to say she’s found him sleeping on a bench backstage. She rouses him, we start the song again, and he finishes strong. The rehearsal is finally over. We give notes to the cast, and I wearily collect my things for the half-hour drive home. “My things” in this case include my son and my 9-year-old daughter, my husband, and four scripts, water bottles, pencils, coats, and bags of dinner remnants. We struggle to the car, load our gear, buckle up, and head out. I turn to my son, who hasn’t been to bed on time in six weeks.

Me: “Were you nodding off backstage, buddy?”

6-year-old: “I was just resting my eyes. I was still listening, though.”

9-year-old: “Pffft, yeah right. You missed your cue!”

6-year-old: “I DID NOT MISS MY CUE!”

9-year-old: “Did TOO.”

6-year-old: “Did NOT, I was AWAKE!”

And they’re off. The family that plays together, stays together—and bickers in the car all the way home from the theater. Crabby Husband and I snap for quiet, and I switch on the continuous Christmas music station, a guaranteed crowd pleaser this November. The play we’re working on is A Christmas Carol, and it helps us get in the mood. Among all the firsts on this work experience—my first full-length stage adaptation, my first directing experience, my first time working alongside the kids—the fact that it’s the first time we’ve all belted out “Faaaaallllll on your kneeeees!” along with Martina McBride is the one that surprises me most.

My husband and I are longtime theater enthusiasts raising two hammy children, so perhaps doing a family play was inevitable, but our experience last fall came together by accident. I had committed to adapting and assistant directing A Christmas Carol, and early on the director and I made the decision that I would also perform as the Ghost of Christmas Future, so we didn’t stick another actor with a non-speaking role. Then my daughter asked to audition, and did well. My husband read on a whim when he came to pick her up, and he was great, too. The director mercy-cast my son so he wouldn’t have to stay home with a sitter while the rest of his family did a show together during the holidays. Et voilà, family play!

I went into rehearsals with a lot of anxiety about involving the kids. The anticipation of months of rushed meals and late nights triggered my Fun Police alert system. I worried they were too young to take on the challenge, and I hoped all the hard work would feel worth it.

And as my opening anecdote suggests, we had some stressful times. Parenting is hard, parenting while working is hard, parenting people who are working hard is hard, and doing it all at once was… Well, hard. It was cool to have our kids get to know us as parents and people in a very different context, and also a little weird.

I found myself having conversations I never would have imagined, like this one, with my son backstage on opening night:

Me: “I need to do your makeup. Go get the eyeliner.”

Son: “I’ll have to steal it from Dad. He’s hogging it.”

My daughter also loved the makeup. As we got ready for dress rehearsal, my husband watched her shellack on layers of lipstick. After layer five, he suggested she might have on enough, and she snapped back, “Dad, I am actually allowed to wear makeup, and I am GOING TO ENJOY IT.”

As the show got going, we had fun opportunities for backstage bonding. I paged the curtain for 9-year-old’s first entrance as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and we became so familiar with the text of the preceding scene between Scrooge and Marley that we could do a fully silent lipsynced performance of it, complete with overwrought gestures and dramatic facial expressions.

Another ritual I loved was waiting for the curtain call with my 6-year-old. I wore a big, billowing cloak as the Ghost of Christmas Future, and my tired little guy would escape the chill backstage by creeping under it and resting his head against my stomach. To the outside observer, we would have looked like one head, one black pyramid of body, and four feet.

Our show closed on a matinee performance, and we spent several hours striking the set before going out to dinner with a family of friends from the cast. Bedtime was a tearful, over-tired affair, but finally we were tucking in covers and snapping off lights. I heard my daughter choke out a question to my husband clouded by the last of her tears: “Daddy? Is it always this hard?” And his gentle answer: “Only when you’re lucky.”

Earlier this year, then-15-year-old snowboarder and Charlottesville native Ward Saunders traveled to Copper Mountain, Colorado, to compete in the U.S.A. Snowboard Association’s national championships. Described by the event website as “the largest snowboard and free skiing event on earth,” the national championships invite top regional winter sport athletes from around the country to compete by age bracket for a shot at a spot in the U.S.A. snowboard team development camp, a training ground for future Olympic hopefuls.

Saunders excels at boardercross, an untimed elimination heat in which a group of four snowboarders race down a narrow, serpentine incline, around and over jumps, drops, and speed bump-like “rollers.”

“Each event has several races. On average I have three or four, but they can get up to seven or eight, and it’s exhausting,” Saunders said. “You take one run at the beginning, then they put you in brackets based on your time. You have to get top two to advance, and then you’re against the top two from another bracket. You’re racing for the top eight. ”

He placed first or second in his first five races on Copper Mountain, which gave him the edge to move on to the championship’s single heat consolation run—his last chance to make the top eight. Saunders described that final race as one of his best moments in his career on the slopes.

His invitation to the U.S.A. snowboard team camp followed. “The day after school ended, I flew out to Oregon to ride with the U.S. snowboard team at Mount Hood for 10 days,” he said. “That was really surreal. I was racing for fun against guys I’ve only seen on TV. I was able to ride the chairlift with Nick Baumgartner [a member of the 2014 Winter Olympic team], who I’ve looked up to since I’ve done boardercross.”

Now 16, Saunders began skiing when he was about 5 years old, but at age 8, he discovered the snowboard during a family trip to Telluride, Colorado.

Since then, he’s honed his snowboarding skills at Wintergreen Resort, which “was really small after going to a bunch of different mountains, but it was a great place to learn,” Saunders said. “At first it was just about balance and keeping the fundamentals of your board flat on the snow and learning how to stop.”

Saunders entered his first competition, a boardercross and skiercross event held at Wintergreen, at age 12. He eventually joined the resort’s snowboarding team, where he heard about Gould Academy, a small private prep school in the ski resort town of Bethel, Maine, that focuses on training its students to become better winter sport athletes.

“My family members have gone to boarding school, so that was an option for me,” Saunders said. “The ski program at Wintergreen was started by the ski coach at Gould, so we checked it out.”

Now he lives in Bethel, where the majority of students spend six days a week on the snow. Classes alternate in length throughout the year to maximize training time, and Saunders and his peers spend about four hours a day “riding around, carving drills, messing around in the terrain park, and going off jumps,” he said. The school offers competitive snowboarding and skiing, and students who don’t join the competition program can spend time alpine skiing, working ski patrol, or teaching local middle school students how to ski.

It’s a major change from Charlottesville. “Up here, it’s normal for kids to be skiing and snowboarding,” Saunders said. “I’m around kids who have the same interests I have and do the same sports that I do. We usually talk about professional snowboarders or which competitions we’re doing and how last year went.”

Since his time with the U.S. snowboard team, Saunders has been invited to train with more Olympic hopefuls at a U.S. gold conditioning camp in Utah. At school, he focuses specifically on boardercross, an idea encouraged during his time with Baumgartner. “Nick told me that he was 15 when he started snowboarding and that he worked his ass off to get where he is today. He realized strength and condition were a big factor to getting him there, so I thought about that and now I go to the gym much more.”

That routine includes weight lifting and high-intensity cardio with a coach five days a week, as well as agility training to improve balance and coordination. “You have to have a lot of intensity to compete with kids your age,” he said. “I had a huge growth spurt the summer between freshman and soph-
omore year. I came in a lot taller and had a good season. This year I’ll be travelling a lot, going out West five or six times. In the higher end competitions like in California and Canada, you have to get in the top 10 or top five a few times to be able to qualify.”

He hopes to achieve just that at Owl’s Head, a ski resort near Quebec, where he’ll compete for a spot at the U.S. Snowboarding Junior World Champi-
onships in China. “That’s like the best riders my age competing against riders from different countries,” he said.

Beyond the snow, Saunders has two long-term goals: to get into a college where he can compete during the winter and still go to class, and find a way to play baseball, too. “I played in the McIntire Little League in Charlottesville, then at Lane Babe Ruth, and now I’m playing center field at Gould,” he said. “Baseball and snowboarding don’t compare. Snowboarding is hurry up and wait, and baseball is a pretty slow sport. But,” he added, “it’s much more relaxing.”

I was stewing—not something on the stovetop, but because of the article I was reading. The title, “Getting Your Kids to eat (or at Least Try) Everything,” promised so much. The content provided so little.

The author’s solution to getting kids to try new things was to do what he, a cook-book writer and cooking columnist, did. Yep, feed them the exotic foods you’re making while doing research for your paying job, and you’ll be just fine. Oh, and make sure you start the process the instant the tykes can gum down solids, or you’re out of luck.

A praiseworthy pursuit, but not practical. For most of us, getting kids to eat the food we enjoy is difficult. My 3- and nearly 5-year-old make it their nightly mission to overthrow me as family culinary director. They proclaim their right to “pick the dinner.” They claim they aren’t hungry. They refuse to eat. They even offer helpful prep suggestions—the other night when I told my oldest I was making pot roast, she suggested we turn it into “chicken pot roast pie.”

I admit this is my fault. While these days I feed the girls what my wife and I eat, in their younger years I fell prey to the ease of feeding them first and later making adult dinner.

But I can’t go back in time. I long ago started this pot roast, and now I’ve got to turn it into chicken pot roast pie.

I turned to UVA nutritionist and children’s health specialist Angie Hasemann for suggestions. How do I get my picky eaters to pick up forkfuls? Here are a few of her best tips.

Show, don’t tell. Hasemann said the most powerful thing you can do for your children’s diet is to be a role model. If they see you enjoying a big salad, they’re more likely to down a plate of romaine themselves. “Kids do an awful job of doing what we say, but they do a great job of doing what we do,” Hasemann said.

Avoid the power struggle. The dinner table is the wrong place to take a hard line. Instead of insisting your kids finish what’s on their plate, set baseline rules about trying new things and be consistent in how you enforce them. In the heat of the moment, make it seem like it’s not that big a deal; your kids will be more likely to feed off their meal than feed off your frustration.

Be persistent. There’s no magic number of times children should try a new food, but keep at it even if they don’t take to it like cheese to macaroni on first bite. “I tell kids those little bumps on their tongues are taste buds, and they change regularly,” Hasemann said. The way we experience food is subject to mood, time of day, and hunger level, so give your little guy or gal plenty of chances to decide once and for all parsnips are yucky.

Serve new foods first. “We eat fastest when we start a meal,” Hasemann said. If your kids sit down and quickly fill up on chicken nuggets, they’ll be less interested in their broccolini. Encourage them to start on their veggies, and if that fails, try coursing out your meals.

Involve kids in prep. Haseman said if you want your kids to try something new, have them help make it. They’ll be less likely to throw out the Y-word if they have some pride in the dish on the table.

Ditch the junk. A lot of kids think of “snacks” as being more fun than “meals,” because snack time means junk food time. Hasemann said some nutritionists advocate serving only foods you’d find at meals for snacks so there’s less of a perceived difference. Whatever you serve for snack, keep it small (snacks should be the size of one hand, meals should be equal to both hands together) so your kids come to the table hungry—the best state for trying new grub.

Have fun with it. Hasemann doesn’t talk to kids about calories and nutrition, she tells them what good foods can do for them. The old spinach-makes-Popeye-strong thing might be played out, but what kid wouldn’t want laser vision from carrots? “One parent told me she tells a story about how a green monster is coming to eat all her kids’ peas,” Hasemann said. “Then when she turns away, the kids eat their peas. It makes it fun and not stressful for anyone, and that’s great.”

Reward carefully. Rewards “shouldn’t cost money, and they shouldn’t be food,” Hasemann said. Choose a privilege-based reward for trying new vittles, like getting to sit at the head of the table, and never punish kids for passing.

If the Gibbs household is any indication, none of these tips are a quick fix, but we’ve improved. In the meantime, does anyone have a good recipe for chicken pot roast pie?

I remember the moment my husband and I decided on a name for our first child. I wish I could tell you that the clouds parted and the sun shone on my belly as the universe accepted the name for its new inhabitant. Names are big deals, after all. The truth is, we were driving to Sam’s Club to buy toilet paper and tubs of hummus. I was doing a little jig in the front seat, trying to “hold it” as the baby karate chopped my bladder.

“I don’t think I care that people will think of the chipmunk,” I said, after stressing about the connotation for weeks.

“OK. I don’t either.”

“OK, so Simon?”

“Simon.”

That’s how our son was named.

I did all the pregnant woman stuff: prenatal yoga, walking clubs, and Facebook groups where I got to form opinions on things that I didn’t even know I could have an opinion about: What kind of sippy cup is best? Should my mesh crib bumper have ties or velcro?

I also learned that keeping baby’s name a “surprise” is what people do now. You don’t tell a living soul, then you announce the name, along with a photo of the newborn baby on Instagram, then you make sure you link it to your Facebook, too. I’m not making fun here. A quick scroll through my own social networking accounts would show you that I do just this. It is, after all, what the “cool” moms do these days.

A few other trends I noticed to which I adhered:

1) The baby must have a name that is unique, lest someone else in their kindergarten class have the same name.

2) Whatever you do, the name must not be on the list that pops up when you Google search “100 Most Popular Baby Names” (I named my second child “Owen” which is no doubt on the popular list, but it’s OK, because it’s a boy name and she’s a girl. I know you were worried. Phew, right?)

And some others, which I noticed after I had my own babies and therefore couldn’t get in on:

1) You can make up a name for your baby. Or you can make up a different spelling of a common name. Both are acceptable.

2) Your children can have themed names; all children’s names can start with the same letter or come from your favorite book, for example.

OK, I’m obviously being a bit dramatic here, people. In all seriousness, naming my kids was my favorite part of being pregnant. I loved picturing a sweet little face to go with the name. I loved doodling it on notepads and ordering products with their monogram on it. As with most things in life, my choice of names for my kids was met with some opposition and some acceptance. Most people get really annoyed that I named my daughter a predominantly male name. She rocks it, though. And I have a “boy” name, so I’m allowed, right?

Here’s what I’ve learned: Whatever name you choose for your kiddo, own it. Love it. You only get to do it once!

There’s an old saying: “A sweater is what you put on when your mother is cold.”

I’d like to add that it’s also what you put on when your mother fears judgment from fellow parents at the bus stop for possibly allowing her child to go slightly underdressed.

My own mother forced me to wear a coat until the spring equinox every year of my childhood regardless of the actual temperature. Back then it was still commonly believed that you could catch the flu from inappropriate attire, so I’ll cut my mom some slack. But that myth is no excuse for my own status as an occasional sweater pusher. I do it because, well, I’m always cold, but more importantly, I don’t want to spend the day worrying that my children might be cold—I just don’t have time for that! Also, and this is embarrassing to admit, but I really do care what other people think. If my daughter doesn’t wear a sweater, will “they” think I don’t care for her comfort? Will they label me a lazy parent? Will they assume I’m incapable of handling a second grader who whines every morning having to wear an outer layer?

Deep down I believe that if I’ve ensured my child’s warmth, packed all the right things in her lunchbox and checked that she did her homework correctly, then everyone, including me, will know I’m a good parent—that day anyway.

The parenting ego is a powerful thing, but as hard as it is to fight, it really has no place in child rearing, according to the experts. With research to back it up, they say that when parents focus, consciously or not, on meeting their own needs—whether that’s to keep up appearances, be proud, or just feel engaged and involved—they might not be satisfying their children’s needs to become self-sufficient, confident, resilient, capable adults. To do that, children must have age-appropriate autonomy and the freedom to make mistakes and take risks. When children have the physical and psychological ability to do something or make a decision, they should be allowed to do it from that point on—whether that’s tying their shoes, choosing their outerwear, riding their bikes to a friend’s house three streets over or giving up soccer.

Also, according to renowned social psychologist Carol Dweck, parents should praise children’s efforts, not their actual accomplishments, even if that means parents don’t get to put one of those “My Child Made the Honor Roll!” bumper stickers on their minivans. Dweck says praising or labeling children as “smart” or a “star” athlete may actually tamp down on their motivation to take on new challenges that could jeopardize their status.

All of this is easier said than done, of course, especially when you’re already 10 minutes late for work and forced to watch your child struggle to make bunny ears with her tennis shoe laces. For fellow parents who, like me, are valiantly battling their egos, but just need to celebrate little victories once in a while, here are a few suggested new bumper stickers for the family truckster:

“My child went sockless in 30-degree weather and the world didn’t end.

Also, she says she’ll wear socks tomorrow!”

“My child struck out all four times at bat at Little League and still showed up and tried his best the next time!”

“My teenager decided to drop all of her AP classes,

but at least now she doesn’t totally hate school anymore!”

As every parent knows, a bored child is a menace to herself and others. Lacking positive ways of focusing her attention, my toddler, for example, will use her own body in experiments designed to discover if there are any loopholes in the laws of gravity. Keeping children entertained during the winter months presents special challenges, especially when the weather obliges us to stay indoors. Granted, winters in Central Virginia are generally relatively mild, but relative warmth doesn’t necessarily make going outdoors more appealing: While 30 degrees and snow is a perfect opportunity to get outside with the kids, 40 degrees and rain is a miserable thing to try to manage with children (no matter what people from the greater Seattle area may say).

Last winter, I resolved to come up with a list of inside things to do out of the home. I expected slim pickings, but quickly discovered that Charlottesville has so many great, publicly available, free or low-cost things to do that even the most restless child could never get to them all in the course of a single childhood.

Starting with the free things, the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (comprising eight library locations from downtown Charlottesville to Albemarle, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson counties), offers a truly impressive variety of free ongoing and one-time classes, events, and activities for kids ranging in age from infants to teens. Some of JMRL’s offerings are open to drop-in attendance, but most require prior registration (and many of those fill up quickly) so check for details about JMRL’s offerings on its website (jmrl.org/pr-kids.htm) or by picking up a program guide from any of the locations.

Of particular note are the storytime programs for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, and book clubs for tweens and teens. My daughter was especially fond of “Mother Goose Time” at Gordon Avenue Library. Glynis Welte did a wonderful job making well-known children’s stories interactive by combining stories, songs, movement, and play time to keep the infants and toddlers fully engaged.

Other highlights from JMRL’s schedule include the monthly Family Movie Matinee, Lego Mania, a “Nutcracker Suite” meet and greet with the Charlottesville Ballet, occasional dance parties for 2- to 5-year-olds, various craft programs, and special programs when school is out (including snow day matinees!).

The Virginia Discovery Museum (vadm.org) sponsors “Kid-vention” (February 22), a free annual event designed to “celebrate science” through a variety of interactive displays. Admission to the VDM itself is $6 per person. The museum, catering to kids from ages 1 to 10, has a lot of exhibits, many of which my daughter found mesmerizing. The VDM is fun for parents, too. The only drawback is that it’s not open on Sundays.

The Charlottesville Department of Parks & Recreation also offers an incredible number and variety of activities for kids from ages 0 to 17—everything from aerobics to zumba. Most classes and activities require prior registration and charge a small fee (albeit higher for non-city residents). Check the Parks & Rec website for details (charlottesville.org/parksandrec).

For sheer physical activity for toddlers and preschoolers, there is the “Parent and Me Playgroup,” which is for kids up to age 5 and meets three times a week. My daughter loved the tumbling class we enrolled her in last winter (so much so that we took the same class twice), so I was pleased to discover that Parks & Rec offers tumbling classes for specific age groups through age 8. Parks & Rec has sessions in specific age groups (starting at age 2 or 3 and running through age 17) in basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis, skating, self-defense, and dance (including separate classes in ballet and zumba). Roller skating at Carver Recreation Center is free (!) on Fridays and Sundays.

For kids who prefer to get their ya yas out in less physical ways, the options include art classes available to kids as young as 1, photography classes (starting at age 7), crafts (starting at age 3), separate guitar and drumming classes (open to kids from age 10), yoga (starting at age 3), Spanish language classes (starting at age 6), and cooking classes (starting at age 9).

Conducting an informal poll of local parents, I came up with even more suggestions for free or low-cost activities not covered by the library, Parks & Rec, or the Discovery Museum. A lot of parents recommend taking younger kids to the indoor play areas at Fashion Square Mall, C’ville Coffee, and Barnes & Noble. Older kids might be interested in “Public Night” at UVA’s McCormick Observatory. It’s free and happens on the first and third Friday nights of each month. Check the website for details (astro.virginia.edu/public_outreach/schedule.php). Finally, Bounce-N-Play (bouncenplayofcville.com) offers an incredible play area for everything from crawling to laser tag and a lounge area for parents. Cost of admission is $10 for each child over 2 years old, but free for adults.

With all the resources Charlottesville has, the problem isn’t finding something to do when the weather is bad—it’s choosing among all the great options.