Sportsmanship....

Hello! How has the weekend been for you guys?!?! Our weekend has been pretty good. On Friday, Morgan got some good news about a great career opportunity. He has asked that I don't share a lot of his work stuff on here so I respect him on that. I love how he gets all "Liam Neeson." HAHAHA!!! So, in lieu of cooking dinner, I decided to order pizza & salad and made us a fruit salad. Madeleine was very excited for pizza night! We put down blankets on our sofa and let her eat in the living room, picnic style, while watching Lilo & Stitch. She's kind of obsessed with that movie right now. It's cute but, I'm sure I'll be sick of it soon enough.

Saturday morning we were all set to take Madeleine to My Gym for her first, "gym/waddler" class. I used to take her to the open play time, at one of the Austin locations, and she loved it! Just from the description of the class made me think she would enjoy it. Apparently they sing, dance, do balance beams and all that jazz. The closest location to us is 25 minutes away so we left an hour early thinking we would be good and would probably even be early. WELL......California traffic SUCKS!!!!! It was 9:15 on a Saturday morning and we were in bumper to bumper traffic. I was fuming!! Needless to say, we did not make the class. We had to re-schedule for another time.

Now, during this whole experience, I was a complete MONSTER!! I threw my phone, huffed and puffed, cursed and threw a fit. You would have thought that I was the one that was going to miss class. I'll admit that none of that was necessary but I was in a mood. After I cooled off, it got me to thinking that I have got to get it together. My temper got the best of me and I sure don't want to show Madeleine that side. 

Then, it got to me to thinking of my fierce, and more often than not, my competitive side. And when I say competitive I mean I will kill you over a board game!! I'm not playing folks, my husband and I cannot play board games unless we are on the same team. We learned this our first year of marriage when we played a board game with some of our neighbors and I ended up screaming at Morgan because I thought he was cheating. I'm bad people!! I even catch myself competing with people while I'm running. If someone passes me while I'm running I usually sprint past them and make sure I stay at that pace so they can't pass me again. They have no idea what sick game I'm playing in my head. And, I won't go into too many details about how bad of a sore loser I am! I've been known to be feisty!

I partially blame my mother. She was that mom that was always involved with her kids' sports activities. She was at every practice, volunteered to coach, or volunteered my dad. Whatever sport I was doing she made sure that I was doing 100%. She was also that crazy mom that would scream at me from the side lines and sometimes run up and down the side lines. She may or may not have yelled at the refs, as well. I remember when I was doing competitive dance, my dad would videotape my competitions, and he would sit away from her so she wasn't screaming "GOOOOO NIKI!!!!" the entire dance routine. But, you could always hear her! At the same token, I am very grateful that I still have the memories of my parents, especially my mom, always being there. There were a few kids that weren't as lucky.

And Morgan, he is just as competitive as me. He and his twin brother will get into an argument about the color of the sky!! One will say its blue and the other will say it's aqua blue. Then, they will debate until one of them is out of breath, which usually can last 4-6 hours. And please don't get them started about who was the faster runner, in high school, on the cross-country team! Or who was stronger. I feel like they came out of the womb competing with each other.

The reason I am telling you guys all this is because I'm hoping to break the cycle a little with Madeleine. I am hoping that when Madeleine starts sports or gymnastics or whatever she wants to try,
that I will learn to chill. I want to teach her that it's not always about winning. I will make every effort to be at every practice, recital, and game but I am going to make a conscious effort to not scream my head off from the side lines. Don't get me wrong, I will cheer but, I'm going to try not to be so Crazy! ;) And along the way, I hope she will have a little of our competitiveness with a whole lot more sportsmanship, than her mama ;)

Well, my rant is over! Hope you guys had a good weekend and see you tomorrow!