Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
Familius is offering a discount of 40% off both Drops of Awesome books plus several other great titles now through Mother’s Day. They’ve curated a nice collection of Mother’s Day gifts.
As a bonus, if you order two books, you get a copy of Motherhood Realized for free.
I like free stuff as much as any Oprah audience member so I thought it was only right to pass this along.
When I agreed to coach Wanda’s itty bitty softball team, I had no idea what I was in for. I signed up under duress and with serious stress and doubts about my ability to pull it off.
It turns out that all you need to be a softball coach at this age is patience, a bit of organizational ability, and love for the girls. And dang. They are so lovable. I’m a bit blown away by how much I’m enjoying managing this team. It doesn’t hurt that the parents are great and jump in and cover for me where I’m weak… like in anything that relates to doing the sportings.
One of my favorite things about coaching is watching the girls learn and process this new sport. Here are a few of the highlights from last week’s games:
They’re learning to bat a live ball for the first time and they’re hitting more than I expected but it’s still very new and often when they do it looks like they hit more by accident than on purpose.
Last week one of my cute girls was up there swinging the bat, and when the ball hit her bat, she was so shocked she didn’t even run. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got huge, and when we finally convinced her to run to first, she ran all the way there with biggest smile on her face and then covered her mouth both hands. Total shock and awe.
The way the game works at this age, every girl gets to bat every inning until she hits the ball. Then we retire the inning. So, while most girls are only allowed to advance one base per hit, the last batter gets to circle the bases for a home run every time. On the last batter, the defensive players are supposed to throw the ball to home and then the catcher can tag everyone out as the empty the bases.
We’d never practiced with a catcher before our first game so the concept of catching the ball at home and then tagging girls out is totally new and each girl, as she takes her turn as catcher seems highly confused by this.
When Wanda got her first turn as catcher, our pitcher threw her the ball after the last batter. Wanda looked around for it, which is hard in all that gear, picked up the ball, dropped it in the ball bucket and went back to her position behind the plate to chillax. All the parents are yelling, “Tag her Wanda! Tag her with the ball,” and Wanda’s looking at us like we’ve lost our minds.
Another cute player figure out that she needed to tag the girls out but the girls did not want to be tagged, so they ended up running in zig-zags and circles back and forth over the baseline and around home plate in a crazy game of tag.
My absolute favorite catcher play came, however, when one little girl got impatient for her outfielders to retrieve the ball that was hit.
“Tag em with a ball?” she thought, “Hmm. Why wait for that specific ball when I’ve got a whole bucket full of balls right next to me.” Like any good problem solver, she just grabbed a new ball and started tagging girls out with it. This reminds me of my mom keeping an extra spoon in her chair when we played spoons and pulling it out when she needed to. Genius.
Now, after one game Wanda proudly informed me that she had learned how to eat sunflower seeds at the games. I was surprised by this pronouncement because sunflower seed eating is actually a pretty advanced skill. Nope. Wanda has it nailed. Video evidence below.
BASEBALL IS NOW!!!
At the beginning of each calendar year, there comes a point, and I never know when it will be, when I get an email that essentially says, “BASEBALL IS NOW!!!”
What this means is, “You signed your child up for baseball six months ago, not knowing when it would be, and then you planned your schedule and moved on with your life. But starting tomorrow you will have baseball practices and games 3-5 times per week in various towns all over the valley and you will no longer be in any way in control of your family’s schedule. You will not eat normal family dinner for the next 4 months.”
And we do this every single year because, flying in the face of everything I thought I knew about genetics, I have a kid who adore sports, particularly baseball.
This year is especially special because not only is Magoo playing, but Wanda is six and it’s her first year playing softball. And she’s not the only one playing softball. Due to an utterly desperate coaching situation in our little corner of Little League, I am managing and coaching her team.
Have I ever played softball before? No.
Have I ever touched a softball before? No.
Have I ever watched a single game of softball being played? Not so much.
Am I much more qualified to direct a theater production, conduct a band, or coach a team of mathletes? Yes.
But I do know how to dial up the YouTube. And I know how to interact with kindergarteners. And I have great parent support and the sweetest assistant coach ever, Coach Laylee. So I’m doing okay so far. Our games start soon and then we’ll see exactly HOW okay.
Not only am I… ahem… coaching, we also decided to sponsor Magoo’s team this year. I have a business license in Washington State as an LLC for my writing and coaching work. So when the team asked if any of us had a business who’d like to sponsor the team and have our business name printed on the back, I could not resist.
Meet Team Drops of Awesome.
While other kids go around with the names of local restaurants and hardware stores printed across their backs, our kids wear the banner of Awesome.
I love to cheer for them but my cheering is at best awkward. At the moment, I’m working to use phrases that don’t in any way come naturally to me to support the kids as they try to do the good baseballing.
When other parents call out things like, “Good cut,” and “Way to get a piece of it,” they sound cool and sports-like. When I call out those things, I feel like I’m dressing my vocabulary up in a baseball mom costume and the costume doesn’t fit so well and I sound silly.
One seasoned baseball mom recently told me it’s all about yelling things with authority. It doesn’t really matter what you say. You just have to commit and sound like you know what you’re talking about. So here are a few I’ve come up with this season and I’m excited to try them out.
“That was high quality cutting!”
“Your arm is nice!”
“You swing with great strength!”
“Throw the ball with more hardness!”
“Knock it to Sammammish!”
“I like the way your bat touched that ball even though it didn’t go the right direction to allow you to run to a base!”
Okay, that last one’s a bit long but I think it gets the point across nicely. I could also go uber short with things like, “BOOM!” “Ska-DOINK!”
I’ll fine tune it and let you know.
Besides vocab choices, the main concerns I have during baseball season are how to feed my kids when we’re at baseball from 4:30-8pm and there’s no eating allowed in the dugout, how to get stains out of white pants that are worn exclusively for times when you plan to slide and roll around in the dirt and grass, and how to prepare for every possible weather situation.
We’re wet and freezing. We’re sizzling and baking in the sun. Sometimes we do both of those things during a single game. So I bring umbrellas and sunscreen, snacks and water bottles, sunhats and parkas.
This year Magoo’s level of Little League team chooses a Major League team for their team name, so we’re the Dodgers. I like this because it makes finding fan gear easy.
The Northwest, and online store that specializes in exciting, new and innovative products for the majority of the world’s most recognized and loved brands in sports, entertainment and lifestyle
The Northwest, an online store that has all kinds of great MLB gear, reached out to see if I was doing a story on baseball this season and when I told them I was, they sent me this awesome Dodgers blanket which helps keep us snuggly warm on rainy days or as the sun drops behind the trees sunny days. It’s fun to be cozy and support our team at the same time. Their site also has tons of other cool licensed products from just about every type of sports team and entertainment companies like Disney, Universal, Marvel Bros, etc. Next time you go to a hockey game, played between Kylo Ren and Santa Claus, they can hook you up for that too.
At least next time I yell, “Dodge like a Dodger baseball man!” I will look legit while saying it.
**Sometimes I get free stuff for mentioning it in a post. I always tell you when that’s the case.**
One of my favorite weekends of the year is our church’s General Conference broadcast. I can go into it tired or frustrated or worn out or nervous about the future and when I’m done watching apostles, prophets, and other strong leaders speak for 8 hours, I’m good. I feel refreshed. I feel confident. I know God is in charge and therefore everything will be fine.
The kids love General Conference weekend too, but for different reasons.
First of all, we get to attend church in our pajamas in our living room and snack while we watch. A pair of fluffy pajamas and a cinnamon roll really help eight hours of church go down.
Secondly, we make it a game for the kids. The night before each session we all guess what color dresses the ladies of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be wearing in a little thing we like to call the MoTab Ladies’ Fashion Betting Pool. We always guess all kinds of crazy colors and Dan always guesses Red for Sunday morning and he is always right.
My contention is, “Is it fun to be right if being right requires being boring? Pick another color.” And this year he did. And he lost. Because they wore red Sunday morning. C’est la guerre, mon ami.
The other game we play is set up sort of like a churchy drinking game. In front of the TV screen, I set out several cups full of small treats with common but not too common words written on them. Every time they hear one of those words in a talk, hymn or prayer, they get to take a treat from the corresponding cup.
Conference is broken up in to four 2-hour general sessions so I change the words and sometimes the treats each session.
The kids ALWAYS want me to pick words like “Jesus” or “and” but I NEVER do. RE: I am not an idiot. Also RE: I hate sugar comas.
This game sometimes produces interesting reactions in my kids.
To Quentin L. Cook’s talk, in which he said the word “missionary” more times than should be strictly legal, netting the kids hundreds of Gummy Bears, Wanda exclaimed, “Best. Talk. OF MY LIFE!”
Then there was the talk that described in great detail the transformative power of the Savior’s ultimate sacrifice and the kids looked like their faces would explode.
“Oh! Come on!!! He is describing the atonement. Why doesn’t he just SAY it!?”
They wanted that chocolate but they had to wait for the actual word.
Personally, I love watching them really listen to the words, even if on the surface it seems like they’re just playing a game. The fact that they were listening well enough to know he was talking about the atonement is a big fat bonus.
For one session I had the words Joseph Smith on one of the cups.
Nada.
Not one mention of the guy.
So I changed out the words before the next session. During the opening prayer of that session, the person offering the prayer mentioned his gratitude for the prophet Joseph Smith. I heard Magoo let out a disgruntled sigh. “Are you serious?” ye mumbled.
Probably my favorite moment of the weekend came when D. Todd Christofferson was talking about fatherhood. At one point he said something about how the greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother. Of course Dan took the opportunity to plant an epic kiss on my mouth. I imagine parents all over the world were engaging in churchly make-outs at that point and I’ll be derned if that doesn’t just make me proud to be a Mormon.
After our kiss, Magoo responded with his traditional, “I didn’t see that,” and without missing a beat, Wanda chimed in, “Thank you, Dad.”
You’re welcome, Wanda. Any time.
Wanda wasn’t feeling great when she woke up yesterday morning. She had a 102 fever and said her tummy hurt. Who am I to send a walking biohazard into a building full of children on the cusp of spring break? Not a terrorist. So I kept her home, gave her some watered-down Gatorade, and got to work blogging in my pajamas.
Early afternoon I made her turn off the Power Rangers and she quickly drifted off to adorable sicky sleep. But when she woke up, she looked horrible. She started sobbing that her tummy hurt and her skin felt hot to the touch. When I asked her to show me where it hurt, she pointed to her lower right side and moaned. I had her try to use the restroom while I Bing-ed “What side is the appendix on?”
Soon she was yelling for me to help her because it hurt too bad to get off the toilet. As I lifted her from the throne, I could tell her fever was really out of control and the forehead thermometer confirmed, 105.8!
Now, for normal kids this is insanely high but I’ve measured Wanda at over 107 in the past and anything under 103 is no big deal for her. However, combined with the side pain, I thought I should at least make an appointment with our pediatrician.
So I called. And his nurse told me to get to an ER quickly. Just like me and Bing, she was vibing appendicitis. So I rushed around like an unshowered maniac, grabbing my purse and phone charger and some grown-up clothes. Five minutes later the nurse called back to make sure she had told me the correct ER and to encourage me to leave as soon as possible.
We zoomed. But it takes about 45 minutes to get from our house to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and my red-hot bubs cried off and on all the way there. “It hurts, Mom!”
I feel so helpless when one of my children is in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. I was doing what I could, which was praying and driving faster than the law allows. I also texted my family on the way out the door and they all said they’d send up a prayer as well.
We pulled into the ER parking lot and I loaded Wanda and her barf bowl and Gatorade into the softball gear wagon and wheeled her into the hospital, red hot and whimpering. The check-in nurse commented on how awful she looked, took our insurance card and sent us to the lobby to wait.
For twenty minutes I watched Wanda become absorbed in a Disney movie and slowly but surely the violent red flush of her cheeks disappeared and her skin color returned to normal.
“Wanda,” I asked, “How does your tummy feel now?”
“It still hurts a little.”
“On the right side?”
“No. Just kind of in the middle.”
They called us back. They took her temperature.
99.9
Magically. Healed. By. The. Hospital. Lobby.
The intake nurse looked at Wanda. And then back at me. Then back at Wanda.
She asked all the questions and Wanda answered them like a person who should stay in for recess and maybe miss school just to be safe, but not someone who needed to be taken to a doctor and certainly not the ER.
I was relieved, truly, that she was feeling better. And if me looking like a hypochondriacish idiot was the price I had to pay for her health, I was willing to pay it. Grudgingly.
They gave her the world’s most expensive popsicle and, as a bonus, she got to pee into a cup and all over my hand.
When the doctor asked me again how high her temperature had been at home, I told him 105.8 and he startled and asked what kind of thermometer I had used. I pulled it out of my purse to show him.
“I don’t think they go that high,” he responded.
“They sure do. They don’t get an error until 108.”
He had no response to that.
I texted my family to tell them that all was well except for the fact that I looked like an idiot. He said they must all be really good prayers if their prayers could bring her back from the brink of death that quickly.
I decided not to share the prayer hunch with the ER doctors but I did wonder how I would ever know if she had been miraculously brought back from the brink by divine intervention. I tend to be more of a Heavenly-Father-please-help-my-daughter-no-wait-she’s-fine kind of person. This could use more in-depth pondering.
Everyone was super nice to me, the way you’re nice to a crazy person. And, according to the supervising ER doctor, it was good that we came in, just in case. Apparently, there have been several cases of this crazy stomach virus in the ER lately. The cramps are intermittent, localized, and extremely painful, accompanied by high fevers.
They look like appendicitis.
The doctor said she had watched kids have acute episodes that had totally faked her out and she’d ordered all kinds of tests that turned up nothing, only to have the kids seem fine half an hour later.
Such is the humbling life of a mom. You sacrifice your pride for the safety of your kids, people who delight and terrify you every day.
On the bright side, at least they discharged her just in time to hit rush hour traffic so we’d have plenty of time to take a rare look at the gorgeous mountain that was showing up against the clear Seattle sky.
When I checked her temperature this morning, she was back up to 104.9. Or not. I don’t think the thermometer really goes that high. But I should probably shower this time, just in case.
Today is the official release day of 523 Ways to Be Awesome! It’s the second book in the Drops of Awesome series and I’m super excited about it.
I guess you could say that today is the book’s birthday and since I wrote it, David Miles designed it, Stephanie Yan edited it, and Christopher Robbins (not Winnie the Pooh’s homie) masterminded the whole thing, we are all accepting gifts and salutations through midnight tonight.
The book is doing well on Amazon already thanks to you Awesome people and Familius has been working hard to get this book and the last one into some epic retail locations. I’m not naming names, but someone I know has been stalking the book shelves at Whole Foods because… ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!… any minute every Whole Foods in North America will have one of these bad boys.
The whole thing is totally surreal to me.
Free range happy bacon.
$10/ounce soy cheese.
Handbags and leggings fashioned out of Kale and Hemp fibers.
Book
s by Kathryn Thompson.
All things that belong at Whole Foods.
We’re even working on scheduling a Costco book signing! You guys! I may get to hang out at Costco like the Blendtec guy, hawking my wares while people try to avoid eye contact and then eventually succumb to David’s gorgeous design and buy my book.
All of this is thrilling and I’m stoked. However, in some ways it puts me in a place where I desperately need to apply Drops of Awesome thinking.
The truth is… there is always something more I could be doing to send this book out into the world more effectively. In fact, there are so many things I could be doing to spread the word about 523 Ways to Be Awesome that it can be really overwhelming. I slip into focusing on everything I’m not doing, which is ironic, considering the theme and content of the book.
Yesterday I sat looking at the list of marketing tasks I wanted to do before the book was released. The list was vast. And the check marks were… not as vast. And I was a day away from launch. And I didn’t have long to focus on it because I had to make dinner and get my son to baseball so I could go run a softball practice for my daughter.
In situations like this, it’s easy to think, “I’m not doing my best to launch this project.”
But then you have to dig further, “I may not be doing THE Best, but am I currently doing MY Best?” These are not the same thing.
THE Best is a notion that there is one perfect right way. It’s rarely realistic and frequently frustrating. MY Best is an honest assessment of what I am capable of doing based on my current circumstances, knowledge, and abilities.
And maybe My Best isn’t as good as I want it to be. So, what can I realistically do to increase my capacity today without beating myself up about what my capacity looked like yesterday?
To help with this process, I’ve been keeping a weekly to-do list, rather than daily. I write down everything I hope to accomplish for the week. Then, each morning I break my day down into time chunks that work around the flow of my non-negotiables and appointments.
Then I add as many items from my weekly to-do list as I can fit into those time chunks.
This gives me a realistic picture of what I actually have time to accomplish in a given day and I’m not quite as hard on myself when I find that I can’t do EVERYTHING. Time is finite and all I can do is use my time well. Sometimes this means changing my non-negotiables, cutting down on the appointments and commitments, and saying “no” to a few more things so I can say “yes” to different things.
I don’t have all the answers to this because I still get frustrated sometimes when I know there is a better way to do something and I just can’t quite get there. But I do know that I am happier when I focus on what I’m doing right and on realistic positive change.
I wrote a book. Drop of Awesome.
I gathered a team of fabulous friends and supporters to help promote it. Drop of Awesome.
I have been studying and planning and learning how to better execute social media strategy and I become more focused every day. Drop of Awesome.
Thank you so much to everyone who is taking this journey with me! Let the launch day festivities begin.