Month: March 2015

Shadow Bats, Jen Fleisher and Jesse Fiske’s musical group with their 5-year-old son, Theo, have recorded one song so far, Jen said, a track entitled, naturally, “Shadow Bats.” But there’s likely more to come. Music is important in the Fleisher-Fiske household: Jen plays bass for Jim Waive & the Young Divorcees and Jesse plays guitar in Mister Baby and Matt Curreri’s band, and also runs Single Barrel Studio out of a structure on their property. And, “to really date him,” Jen said, Jesse was an original member of the Hackensaw Boys, for which he played bass. “When we moved in together, we may have been the only couple in town with two stand-up basses in their bedroom,” Jen said.

But that’s not all they’re passing on to Theo, who loves being active by taking yoga classes, something his mom also teaches around Charlottesville.

“I knew I wanted him to be exposed to yoga early—to cultivate patience and mindfulness. He was born in the middle of our second year running [Charlottesville Yoga School],” Jen said. “I used to bring him in the sling for our weekends together.”

Theo often helps Jesse, a mason, on projects around the house, too. Between all of his extracurriculars, he’s a very busy little boy. “I had him take tap/ballet, we played SOCA soccer, we’re signed up for skateboarding in the spring. The kid will be on the move,” Jen said. “But so far, yoga and music have been the consistent threads that we’ve woven into his life.”

In three words, describe another family member:

Theo on Momma: Works with Michaux

Theo on Poppa: Strong, works on a jobsite

Poppa on Momma: Big boss, big heart, big brain

Momma on Poppa: Only three? Golly! Patient, supportive, creative, gorgeous, diligent, solid, love of my life!

Poppa on Theo: Funny, smart, energetic

Momma on Theo: Bright, loving, happy

What are your careers?

Jen: Partner at Charmed Designworks, prenatal yoga teacher at ACAC, yoga sub in town, midwife in training, taking pre-reqs for nursing program, birth doula.

Jesse: Mason at Lithic Construction.

Theo, what would be your ultimate day in Charlottesville?

Smith Aquatic & Fitness Center, Belmont Park, Main Street Arena ice rink, Bend Yoga, stay up late and hang out with Momma and Poppa and watch “Octonauts.”

When and where do you spend family time around Charlottesville?

Smith Aquatic & Fitness Center on rainy days, Belmont Park on sunny days, Riverside Park on bike-riding days, Bend Yoga on Wednesdays! At home, we like to play music, have everyone over for dinner, hang in the backyard, garden, play with Legos, play Uno, throw parties, measure all visitors on the measuring wall, build forts and cook. We also love going to the library, especially Gordon Avenue. And we frequent Aqui Es Mexico (it’s tied with Blue Moon Diner for favorite restaurant).

Do you have any advice on how families can better enjoy our town?

Check out online resources, as they list a bunch of things that you would otherwise not know were happening. Parks and Rec has great offerings at all hours. Blue Ridge Music Together was an integral part of our extra curricular life from the time Theo was 18 months til 5 years old. Mostly, keep in touch with parents who have kids your kid’s age, and search the kid resources for calendars of fun things to do!

What are some of the more challenging aspects of parenthood?

Sleep deprivation is a torture device! Of course working and balancing that with downtime is a challenge for any working family. But, when I daydream about our life, it’s mostly about us traveling more—we have dear friends in Europe and family out of state. Having the time, funds and space to make that a reality is super challenging. Fortunately, we have great friends in the neighborhood who help support us on a daily basis, so the need for escape is lessened by their presence. Feeling like we’re part of a village versus out here on a deserted parenting island definitely makes the harder times easier to swallow.

If someone had told Javin Montgomery-DeLaurier when he was a little kid that by age 16 he’d already be on the receiving end of more than a dozen scholarship offers to play college basketball, he probably would have laughed.

“I was still growing really fast when I was 10, and I was really clumsy,” Javin said, pointing to his size-19 feet. “I’ve always played sports, but the coordination wasn’t always there.”

Clearly, Javin caught up to his towering height of 6’9″, as the power forward at St. Anne’s-Belfield School has become a leader on the basketball team and a highly sought-after recruit for schools like Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, and University of Richmond. The STAB junior said he doesn’t yet know where he wants to go to school come 2016. A science whiz whose current favorite class is AP biology (and who also plays viola in the orchestra), he’s considering pre-med, but at this point he’s just taking it all in.

“I’m just really grateful for all the opportunities,” Javin said. “I’m not going to analyze it all until after the season, but I’ll be looking at both the academics and the basketball program. It’ll be whatever’s the best fit for me, on and off the court.”

For Javin’s mom C’ta Michaelson-DeLaurier, who makes the hour-long drive from the family’s Nelson County farm to STAB each day, basketball is about more than just physical activity. As the mother of four boys, she’s grateful for any outlet for all that energy and testosterone, but it’s also given her eldest son a sense of focus.

“Beyond the obvious physical benefits, it can provide an opportunity for real production, introspection and reflection as well,” she said. “Kids exist in that moment, focusing only on that task during competitive play, working towards a favorable outcome. Then afterwards, at least in Javin’s case, he processes what he thinks he can do differently to enhance overall play.”

Javin’s been an athlete for most of his life, but it wasn’t until the last few years that he started channeling the majority of his energy into basketball. He used to spend time on the football and baseball fields too, but as a freshman at STAB, he decided to focus his athletic efforts on the basketball court. When he wasn’t dunking for his high school team, he and his family were schlepping to Washington, D.C., or Richmond for him to to play on an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) boys’ basketball team.

“That was a two-and-a-half-hour trek every weekend for me and my family,” Javin said of his experience on the D.C. team. “That was definitely a big moment when I decided, if we’re going to do this, I’m going to have to commit to this.”

AAU may have eaten up a good chunk of his weekends, but it also sent him all over the country—Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Vegas—for tournaments and championships, and put him on the court with athletes he may end up competing against in college. It’s a “different kind of basketball” from the local high school league, he said, and he doesn’t necessarily favor one over the other.

“There’s a lot less running and gunning. It’s more of an offensive play-oriented style, whereas AAU is a lot faster.”

Playing for two different teams (which compete during different seasons) has jumpstarted a lesson for Javin that a lot of students may not learn until they’re stuck with a roommate in college.

“You have to learn how to play with your teammates, and you might not always get along or like each other,” he said. “It forces you to put circumstances aside and achieve a common goal. When it comes down to it, you’re not always going to be able to pick your situation. Sometimes you’ve just got to do the best with what you’ve got.”

When Selene and Avery Evans got married in 2007, they weren’t entirely sure how they were going to merge their two families. They had five kids from previous marriages between them, ranging in ages from kindergarten to high school, and a new house with enough space for everybody to have their own room. But if you ask anybody in the seven-person blended family what they remember most about the early days of living under the same roof, they all say the same thing: Rock Band. You know, the multiplayer video game that came out in 2007, complete with guitars, a drum set, and microphone for vocals. For the newly-formed family, the game was an unexpected bonding opportunity.

“We’d make it no-fail so we could all play together,” said Avery’s 22-year-old daughter Josie, recalling the satisfying irony of watching her older brother and youngest stepsister, roughly 12 years apart in age, wail on the guitars side-by-side in front of the family room TV. “It was like the great equalizer.”

Selene and Avery were happy to give all five kids their space, and knew the older ones in particular may be more inclined to shut themselves into their rooms. But nobody had TVs or computers in their bedrooms, Avery said, so they had to venture out to the common areas for any screen time.

“That was by design,” Avery said. “The only way they could enjoy the television or computer was in communal space. So you could disappear into your room and have private time, but you couldn’t just disappear into your room and play on the computer or watch television.”

With or without Rock Band—or Sims, a computer game that Selene’s daughter Cina said she specifically remembers learning to play alongside Josie—everyone admits that it wasn’t always easy.

“Everyone kind of had their moments,” Cina said.

Cina and her sister Chloe were both in elementary school when their mom got remarried —young enough, Cina said, that she doesn’t remember much about her parents’ marriage. She said the transition was less about the emotions around gaining a step-parent and some new step-siblings, and more about the newfound challenge of dividing their lives between two houses. Cina and Chloe bring their belongings across town each week to evenly divide their time between Selene and Avery’s house and the house where their dad lives with their stepmom, three stepsisters, and half-brother.

But for Cina, a high school student who describes herself as being pretty laid back, blended family life has given her the patience and ability to work with just about anybody.

“It’s made me a more open-minded person, more understanding,” she said, adding that a lot of her friends also have divorced parents, and the concept of blended families isn’t stigmatized the way it used to be.

Josie, who said she was “just excited to be getting little sisters,” agreed, and said that more people in the house meant more resources, opinions and advice.

“It just increases the possibility in your life, whether it’s having another role model, or having other siblings and realizing there are different sorts of people with different backgrounds,” Josie said. “Most people don’t get confronted with that in their own homes. Mostly you go out into the world to meet people who aren’t in your immediate family or like you.”

Selene is the first to admit that even though they didn’t have many “Brady Bunch”-esque disaster moments, it wasn’t always perfect. But she recognized early on that sometimes you have to just go with the flow, even if that means there wouldn’t be any bread left for dinner because everybody kept grabbing slices as they congregated in the kitchen to chat while she finished cooking. With that many people under one roof, there has to be a semblance of organization and structure, obviously, but for the Evans family, it seems that the organic, unplanned moments are the ones that they remember.

“I didn’t get it right a lot of the time, but it’s about taking pleasure in those moments,” Selene said. “Like when we’re down playing Rock Band and it’s 9:30 on a school night, but everybody is getting along and it’s like, alright well, it’ll be O.K. if we don’t go to bed at 9pm.”