Friday, January 31, 2014

Lessons from Max


(I just posted this over on my personal blog but seeing how I have been neglecting this blog for a while now and this is really more about Max than about me, I figured I would put it on here as well. Life is busy, the kids are doing great, Karl is hanging in there with his PhD, and I am trying to keep things flowing nicely. Emphasis is on trying! I will be back here again soon...)

Max came home from Kindergarten with this wonderful piece of art the other day:


I certainly can't keep all my kids' art projects and was about to throw this one in the trash, when I folded the bottom out and read this: 

When I am 100 years old I will... 

... be a professional at any sport

It made me smile. And laugh. And melted my heart. 


He is such a cutie and SUCH a stinker. 

Of course his older brother just busted up laughing when he got home. Because, d'uh, do you know of any 100-year-old that is a professional at any sport? Karl and I were silently laughing as well. 

I love Max's confidence. Obviously he has no idea how long 100 years are. He gets weeks and months and years mixed up and tomorrow seems an eternity away. But he has a strong personality and, although exhausting most days, will come in handy many times throughout his life, I am sure! If there is one thing I hope I can teach my kids besides kindness (which I am struggling with because, let's face it, I have a lot to learn in that department) it would be: dream big, work hard, reach for the stars, fail and try again. You can be anything you want to be! Now I just need to remember that myself... 

This is now the second kid whose teacher has taken time to let us know that we need to work on good sportsmanship. Not in a bad way necessarily. They are good kids. But they are competitive and fierce and, apparently, think they are the best in the world at anything involving sports. Yikes! 

But Noah has learned over time and Max will, too. We talk a lot about what it means to be a good sport. How fun is it to be the best soccer player but to play mean and unfair? No matter how good you are, if you can't play nice, no one wants you on their team. So now the best Kindergarten teacher in the world decided to let Max stay out after his recess and help ref some of the games of the older kids. Needless to say: He LOVES it. And it sounds like he is learning a thing or two. 

It's a process but we are all learning together and enjoying the journey


What do you wanna be when you are 100 years old? 

I want to be healthy and sane and able to enjoy my grandchildren and great-grandchildren! 






1 comment:

elenajube said...

I loved this. I, personally, want to be dead long before 100. People in my family live long and are crazy. Don't want to be that crazy woman. But if I'm still alive, maybe I'll shoot for being a professional at any sport, too, like Max. Or at least hanging in there like that 87-or-something-year-old woman I met at Matt's Kokopelli Tri. "I'm not fast, but I finish," she told me, "and it's better than sitting around." She'd already tried out a couple of marathons and thought a triathlon sounded like a good next step.