A Spring Predicament

Regardless of what the calendar says, spring is here in many ways. The most obvious is the much anticipated schedule for Sumner’s Spring Parks & Recreation program. Several of us moms have been stalking the website for its arrival. As my family sees more and more blue skies, we prepare more and more for our spring months ahead and have begun the inevitable planning of a shuttle schedule to get the kids to and from their desired events.

The schedule, which just came out this past week, is filled with activities and events for families and kids of all ages. The dozens of classes range from swim lessons to Tae Kwon Do to babysitting classes. (Who's excited to see the Sumner Pool back in operation for our family swim lessons?)

Since we’ve enrolled my daughter into soccer for the past couple years, I was looking for a new option and sought out the spring schedule for Enumclaw Parks and Recreation. Their kids' dance classes looked ideal. But when presented with the option, my little tomboy preferred the Kids Love Soccer outdoor skills clinic over ballet with barely a hesitation.

Mothers of little girls know what this means and grieve the lack of girliness in their little ones. And although I have a very weak argument for choosing dance over soccer, I still believe that well-roundedness and exposure to varying hobbies and activities is key in raising kids. Aside from that, dance is a whole new skill set of self-discipline, strengthening and posture that is hard to find elsewhere. Besides, it should be a rite of passage for us moms to see their little girls in tutus.

Husband, of course, takes a different approach to the subject. Instead of encouraging a well-rounded trial of new things, he figures that an activity is an activity and as long as she’s interested, we should run with it. Plus, it’s a sport he knows about and is easily able to be involved with. Valid point, I agree, but I don’t want to be the full-time soccer chaperone for the next dozen years travelling from tournament to tournament all over the nation – all at the expense of simply not broadening my daughters horizons a bit. Maybe an extreme view, but I so badly want to try something different. While I argue that it’s our job to expose new things and encourage her to try something different, he counters with the importance of sports and our recognizing her interest.

Agreeing to disagree on this matter, we came up with a “solution”: for this season, and perhaps against our better judgments, we are enrolling our daughter into two programs. This means two payments, two sets of gear, two schedules and two days of running around town. Then throw in the sports class for my son adding another day of schedules, payments and gear. It’s exhausting and a bit daunting. And we haven’t even started yet.

We've always had the understanding that we would allow each kid to be in a single program at a time to avoid getting overwhelmed, and we agree with this idea still but also acknowledge that our daughter has strong needs to be active and involved and we're hoping this plays into our favor.

We’re calling this a trial run – both for multi-sport schedules and for the chosen activities. We’re hoping to see a more defined interest from our daughter and also testing ourselves of our realistic capabilities in hopes to better set us up for the coming years which will most likely include even more to schedule.

Fingers crossed we get to end before burning out.