My Two Cents Worth!

Actually, the more accurate title would be a much larger figure than .02, but that figure is no one else's business, so I will stick with the old .02 adage.

Lately, I have been reading a lot of articles on the subject of cheerleading. There is much debate on whether cheerleading should or should not be considered a sport. There is also much discussion as to whether parents should even allow their child/ren to participate. Some are of the opinion that cheerleading is just a waste of time and money. So, here is where I rant inform about cheerleading...

People have asked me, and others have just wondered, why we spend so much time and money for our daughter to cheer. Some have even gone as far as to ask how this is going to help her later in life or what are we hoping this will achieve? First of all, her idea of  "later in life" is Friday. Others have been quick to point out that cheerleading has one of the highest injury rates in the nation. It's true, cheerleading is dangerous - just as is every other sport that requires great physical exertion.

Cheerleading is NOT all about bubbly school girls with pom poms. However, that is the general public's idea of a cheerleader. Yes, school cheerleaders typically have pom poms that they shake while shouting a few cheers in support of their school's team. They probably do a few jumps and maybe a stunt or two or even a pyramid.  Some schools have competitive squads, which take cheerleading to a higher skill level. It is this type of cheerleading (school and/or rec) in which the most injuries occur. Falling off the top of a pyramid onto a wooden gymnasium floor or hard football field does not do the body good.

Cheerleading is also NOT all about the NFL or NBA dancers you see on TV in their booty shorts, bra tops and gyrating for the cameras and drunken fans. They work hard and get paid very little, but are dancers nonetheless.

Then there is competitive All Star cheerleading. These cheerleaders train year-round with certified coaches who help them develop their skills to the ultimate level. They practice and compete on spring floors padded with thick foam. Yes, it still hurts when you fall off the top of the pyramid, but you are much less likely to be injured. These cheerleaders compete at all levels, from the beginner to the elite. These cheerleaders not only perform for judges, they are performing for an audience. Their routines, which consist of stunting, pyramids, tumbling, cheer and dance, have to be perfect. These are the cheerleaders that college coaches look at first. But, as with any competitive independent (outside of school) sport, there are costs. And yes, it adds up. We have to pay for uniforms, special shoes, coaching fees, choreography fees, travel costs, bows (yes, bows are still the signature attire of a cheerleader), competition fees, and the lists goes on.

This is what my daughter does, All Star cheerleading. This is what she excels at. This is what she is passionate about. This is what she has never, in the three years she has been participating, asked to miss. Never. Not once. In fact, she begs to go early and stay late. EVERYDAY. Even when she is not practicing, she is asking to go to the gym. It has become her second home and the coaches, cheerleaders and parents have become her second family.  This is my child who refuses to speak to people she doesn't know and who hides behind me when spoken to. This is my child who, once she sets foot on the competition floor, becomes a very self confident, talented and athletic entertainer. Why wouldn't I want my child to be a cheerleader? Which is why you will most likely find me helping out at the gym, selling beer at NFL games, washing cars, holding bake sales & hot dog sales, selling candy bars, and doing whatever else I need to do to pay for my daughter to do what she loves to do!

For those who wonder where cheerleading will get her in life, I say where ever she wants to go! Beyond the college scholarships and the careers in coaching, there is an endless list of opportunities in the cheer industry (if that is what she wants to do). There are competition directors, cheer companies (big and small), gym owners, uniform designers, choreographers, cheer camps organizers and staffers, magazines devoted to nothing but cheerleading, radio & TV stations, videographers, photographers, etc., etc., etc.... So, for me, every dollar I spend on cheerleading I see as an investment in her future. Besides, who doesn't want to see their child happy!

Cheerleading requires dedication, commitment and sacrifices. It certainly is not for everyone.

One last thing...
For those who think that cheerleading is not a sport, try this:
From a standing position, throw yourself backwards while doing a full spin sideways before landing on your feet. Then, jump up in the air twice with your legs in a full spread eagle and touch your toes. As soon as your feet hit the floor, jump backwards again into a tuck and land on your feet. Then immediately throw yourself into two back handsprings before spinning into a full sideways twist. Then, go into another series of jumps, and they had better be pretty. Then run across the floor, fling yourself into a sideways tuck stepping out of it in one smooth motion before spinning sideways in the air once more. Don't fall! Then try a cartwheel, but you can't use your hands - at all. Go seamlessly into a choreographed dance, throw yourself into another backwards tuck, maybe throw in a front tuck for good measure before flying across the floor again and doing another sideways spin, only this time you spin two times around before landing, on your feet not your butt. Now do all of this (plus a few more things) while smiling, and we haven't even gotten to the stunting part! How about standing on one leg while three of your teammates hold you up in the air by the bottom of one foot. Now, take your other foot and pull it up over your head. Don't lean forward or backward or sideways - you might fall. Can't do it? My daughter can. She's ten and a cheerleader!

Bren
An Always Supportive Cheer Mom

Being a Cheer Mom

You would think that being the mother of a cheerleader is easy. It seemed so simple at first...

As I have mentioned previously, I have a drama queen 9-year old that is also a cheer diva. She began her cheer career at the ripe old age of 7 with a once-a-week tumble class. We were looking for something fun and active that she could do, that she would enjoy and that would also allow her to expend some energy (a nice way of saying, she was wild and I needed a break and prayed that she would conk out early each night). I didn't mind the drive to the gym in another county, and I looked forward to that one hour each week when I would get to talk with actual adults (not just pretend to have conversations with the ones I would occasionally see on TV since our TV was usually tuned in to the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon).  Within a couple of months my daughter had decided that she wanted to be on one of the cheerleading teams at the gym "more than anything else in the world". Since these teams were competitive teams that traveled around doing competitions, my husband and I decided it would be best to take her to a competition first, so that she could see what all was involved. We knew that once she saw the raised stage, the bright lights, the very loud music, stern looking judges and the thousand people watching - she would run for the hills. Yea, right.

But in my mind, cheerleading can't be that time consuming for me, right?

Two years, a gazillion dollars and just as many miles on my car later, I have been appointed a Team Mom, A Gym Mom, Booster Club President, coordinator of whatever, snack bar supply getter, the mom who always has whatever you need in her bag, the copy maker, the garbage collector, the idea bouncer, the money collector, phone answerer, fundraiser organizer.... you get the idea.
 
The once-a-week trip to the gym is a distant memory. A typical day now usually begins with a wake-up call from a coach, followed by a quick shower, the inhalation of a banana or granola bar (ok, usually it's a Reese's Cup) while speeding safely driving down the highway to get to my diva to practice on time. By the time we return home, the sun has long set and I want nothing more than to go to bed or a shot of something strong.

So here I am. At the gym. Writing my blog. I've been here since 8:45 this morning and will be here until 9:00 tonight. I haven't seen the other members of my family in three days. I think they still live with me, but I'm not sure at this point. The only evidence of them has been a sink full of dirty dishes and massive amounts of empty food wrappers/boxes and soda cans in the trash/recycle bin.

Yes, I am a cheer mom (I even have a t-shirt that says so). I am my daughter's biggest supporter. And despite the empty checkbook, endless volunteer hours, countless drive-thru meals and the real temptation to put a blowup mattress in the gym office, in the end - it is all worth it!

National Champion!

Bren

The Great Hamster Chase

I am a sucker. I will be the first to admit that.

Recently my daughter wanted a hamster. She talked about nothing else for weeks. So I finally gave in and took her to the pet store to pick out a little furry rodent. And cage. And rodent igloo. And running ball. And bedding. And food. And....and.....and....  It was a cute little thing, and once again - I'm a sucker. My daughter named it Cookie Dough and we brought her home, put her cage together and helped her to settle into her new surroundings. She seemed content, but little did we know that Cookie Dough is a master escape artist.

A little less than 48 hours later, I discovered that Cookie Dough had made a break for it when one of her crawling tubes was not properly secured. How the little sucker was able to push the tube completely loose and off of the cage is still a mystery. We weren't even sure how long the fuzz ball had been missing. For hours we scoured my daughter's bedroom. We tore apart her bed, her nightstand, the dresser, the boxes of toys. Dumped out her basket of shoes and another basket of stuffed animals. We searched her closet, then did it all again. And again.  Then we moved on to our son's room, then the bathroom and finally my room. We searched every nook and cranny, then took our search downstairs. Could a rodent the size of a chicken nugget really make its way down a flight of stairs? We weren't sure, but with a child in hysterics, we were going to keep searching. That is when we noticed that one of our dogs was looking rather satisfied. Guilty even. This is the canine that likes to bring us "presents" and leave them at the door. We have been blessed with gifts of mice, birds, frogs, moles (lots of moles) and the occasional groundhog (I kid you not!). This is also the same dog that had not taken her eyes off of Cookie Dough since we brought her home. Taps began playing in my head. And as the realization of what had occurred began to sink in with my daughter, her wailing increased ten-fold. Cookie Dough had come to our family as a pet and ended up as a midday snack.

My husband and I felt so bad, that we (yes, we both are suckers) went out and bought another fuzzy chicken nugget. Cookie Dough 2. We brought her home and got her settled into her predecessor's cage, making sure that everything was securely connected (we wanted to keep our dog on a strict dog-food-only diet!).

That night, our still distraught daughter decided to sleep in our bed. She had not quite warmed up to Cookie Dough 2 yet. So we all settled in: my husband, my daughter, me, and two of our dogs who sleep under our bed. At 3:00 am we hear scratching under our bed and one dog (the gracious present giver) jumps up bumping her head on the bed rails. My husband and I sit bolt upright. Could it be? No, it was impossible. But we were going to check to be sure. As my husband escorts (ok, throws) the dog out of the room (to be on the safe side) I peer under the bed. Actually, I was laid out flat on my belly with a flashlight. There under the bed I see a dust ball with feet fly past our Chi-weenie (who is completely oblivious and just wants to go back to sleep). For the next hour we chase, corner, search, listen, and build baracades. We look like we are reenacting an episode of the Three Stooges. Our daughter is sitting on the bed shouting instructions "She went that way! Over there!). Cookie Dough certainly is a sneaky one, not to mention lightening fast! We trap her under the bed and she bolts for the nightstand. We block her exits and she slips past anyway leaving a blazing tail towards the chest-of-drawers. She bolts out from the back and runs behind a bookcase. I finally have her cornered when she decides to try to make another break for it and runs up inside a roll of wrapping paper. There is no escaping now! Once I finally have her and our daughter is rejoicing, we have to figure out what to do with her. Cookie Dough 2 has taken up residence in her cage, and we quickly learned that hamsters that were not raised together cannot bunk together. Lucky for me, we had a spare found-at-a-yard sale cage that my daughter had initially refused to use because of the color. By 4:00 am we were the proud owners of two Cookie Doughs in two cages. And life just got more complicated!

Cookie Dough 1 has since gone on to escape two more times. The first of which, she was found and captured behind the couch in the living room. The second time, however, she actually did not escape so much as was helped out of her "holding pen" (a big box with some shavings where we put her when we are cleaning her cage). Yes, she was helped out. By our dog. Who had her in her mouth. I did mention she hadn't taken her eyes off of the fur ball. My son was able to get the dog to drop her, then with another Stooges reenactment, we caught her once more.

Cookie Dough 1

Chloe (the gift giver) just waiting for opportunity to strike - again

Anyone want a little furry chicken nugget?

Bren

The tears of youth

I was planning on writing about something else today, but changed my mind with events unfolding at my homestead.

My 9-year old cheerleading diva just burst into tears. Not "look at me because I need attention" tears, but real sobbing, shirt soaking, alligator tears. She did the same thing a few days ago. Now, to understand my (and my dh's) frustration with this is know that typically when our daughter is upset, she refuses to talk. At all. Not a word. Nada. Just sobbing and wailing. And usually we have no idea what is wrong. Such is the case as of late...

When our daughter sunk into her wailing isolation a few days ago, it took us HOURS to finally get her to speak. The cause of her the-world-is-over-for-me tears? Club Penguin. For those of you not familiar with Club Penguin, it is an internet game by Disney, where members create an animated penguin, decorate an animated igloo and play silly games. Yes, an internet game has brought my child to producing rivers of tears. And not just once. The incident a few days, the one that took hours to figure out, was over the fact that she could not log into this virtual penguin land. Turns out, Disney forgot to renew it's web domain. Disney. The company that was built on making children happy had now done something that produced an ocean of tears for children all over the world! In my mind, it wasn't such a big deal. An inconvenience, yes, especially since we are paying a nominal monthly fee for our daughter to have access. But apparently for the countless kids out there, this event was of catastrophic proportions.

Today's ordeal was almost as life-ending. The cheer diva's special code did not open the right virtual catalog! Oh, the horrors! To be young again...

Of course, I may be reduced to tears as well if I had ordered Cosmo and got Fisherman's Digest instead.

The Procrastinator

It is October and I have not even begun to think about Halloween. It is not because I am anti-Halloween or refuse to let my children participate, I actually enjoy Halloween in its full chocolate glory. No, it is because in my mind it is still September and Halloween is a distant holiday not to be thought of for at least four more weeks. WHEN DID IT BECOME OCTOBER??

So here I am on October 28, no pumpkins, no decorations, my youngest child has no costume and she has a costume party to go to in one hour!! Yes, I did conveniently forget about the party, but that was partly due to the fact that she has been sick and I just assumed (ok, hoped) that she wouldn't be well enough to attend. I am now feeling like the bad mom watching my seven-year old dig through her dress-up box looking for something to wear. ANYTHING to wear. The problem is most everything is too small. (It has been a while since we've gone through her dress-up box). Everything else is "too itchy".

When my boys were little I actually made their costumes. And there were some good ones, too. Among the favorites were a Hershey kiss, a pencil and a robot. As they got older, they wanted store-bought scary costumes. And by the time my daughter came along, I was thrilled to buy the princess dresses. It was a nice change from goblins, vampires, monsters and other creepy creatures.

But now what am I going to do? Thirty minutes and no costume. Maybe an old sheet with a couple of eyes cut out? Better yet, ONE eye (shows more character and takes less time!).

Bren