Siblings

I have one brother.  He is 7 3/4 years younger than I and was 8 years behind me in school.  We had very little sibling rivalry.  I do know that he was compared sometimes unfavorably to me while in junior high and high school (the joys of being in a small school).  The funny part of that is that he is amazingly smart and driven.  He's a Chemical Engineer and when he starts talking about work I see how much he enjoys his job and the challenges.  Me, I'm intelligent, I'm driven to be the best mom I can be, but I wasn't the natural student, I believe I suffered from a little ADD before it was cool to have ADD and I am not an auditory learner, so all of the lecture classes made it very difficult for me to learn (and that, too, was before many of the different styles of learning and teaching were popular).  Regardless, we did our thing and our parents treated us as individuals.  I was the 4-H, livestock raising child and he was the outdoorsy Boy Scout who still loves hiking and camping.

My kidlets are closer together and have all been trying the one-up-manship game.  This is really hard for little Tinkie who wants to be successful like her sister in gymnastics and isn't going to be this year.  Sister scored the sought-after 36 last weekend and Tinkie celebrated with doing one more skill on the uneven bars without a hand from her coach.  Dizzy gets the attention of being very successful and Tink cries over the 4.6 score she got from the judge.  We had a little talk after the meet, Tink and I did, and decided bars are stinky and we're going to work on getting stronger for next year and not worry as much about what the judges score her if she's trying to do it without a spot from her coach.

Then there's Bean who wanted to be on the boys team at the gym very badly.  He tried for months to get there, but never did develop the upper body strength that it takes to be successful.  Think we've fixed that with the 6 weeks on the crutches...but he's discovered running and loves it.  Cross country running is another event where you are competing for yourself, trying to better yourself and your time each time and your scores can help your team.  The group at his high school is amazing and I'm proud to be a mom there.

Obviously Dizzy's elbow is healed, Tink managed not to join her siblings in the injured department (the magic third time's a charm went to a co-workers granddaughter who fell and probably broke her nose...poor punkin!) and we're 19 days away from the cast coming off.

Signing off from my cold little home.  It's -6 right now and I'm going to make some potato and ham chowder for dinner.  Sorry no pictures this week, need to organize the photo albums to have access to some great ones of the past.  One of these days....

Stay warm, stay safe and stay healthy! (I'm leaning on the last one as I finished my antibiotics on Monday and hope the sinus infection stays away...)