MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

See that photo there to the left? Those swings that are way way up in the sky? My child is up there. My little five year old. No matter that her daddy is up there with her. No matter that thousands of kids go on this ride every day, uneventfully, ones who are just as small as Maya. I still watched the swings go up with my heart in my throat. I still gave her a thumbs up and a grin that said "This is going to be AWESOME!" but what I was really thinking is "OH - MY - GOD! MY CHILD IS GOING TO FALL OUT OF THAT SWING AND PLUMMET TO HER DEATH!"  Maya thought it was the greatest ride she had ever been on, ever! Matthew, on the other hand, was pretending to scream and laugh, while tightly gripping her arm the whole time and counting the seconds until they were back on solid ground. These are the things we do as parents.  I knew that there was no way my five year old was going to fall out of those swings. I am fully aware of safety regulations and height requiremen

Those of you who have either no clue or no interest in jiu-jitsu are welcome to skip over this paragraph. Or read it and just gloss over the terms that make no sense. Or look them up and become a dictionary of entirely useless BJJ words. (Remember when you were a kid and you came across a word you didn't understand and your mom told you to look it up?  OMG, I hated that! How many of you actually looked those words up? Yeah, me neither. What was my mom thinking?) So anyway, earlier in the week, this happened: I was rolling with a partner whom I train with all the time when I found myself in the top of half guard, messing around with her arm. Not sure where I was going with it exactly, I grabbed her arm in a kimura grip and started to twist it around, which she immediately defended by turning her body in a way that made it easy for me to slide my other leg across her body and take the mount. Where I proceeded to not accomplish much. But then a few minutes later it happened again, the

This past Saturday, when I stepped off the floor after teaching my last kids class, my husband stuck his phone in my face. "Look!" He had just returned from watching a couple of hours of jiu-jitsu at the IBJJF NY Open. Clearly I was supposed to know who this person was, standing next to him and smiling at the camera.  "Um, I'm sorry, who is that again?"  I am sure they could hear his sigh all the way in Canada. "Don't you watch any You Tube videos? That's Marcelo Garcia."  Of course I know who Marcelo Garcia is and I actually do occasionally watch his BJJ videos. But I am usually looking at what his arm is doing. I really have no idea what his face looks like.  To be fair to Mr. Garcia, I really do not know what anyone looks like. Seriously. I live in NYC, a place where plenty of celebrities also reside. Every few months Matthew will suddenly point out the car window and say "Look, its ______!" To which I will inevitably repl

"It is big and it is frightening at times but on the whole the world is a wonderful place."  Charlotte's Web Maya and I have a new routine at the supermarket. Instead of her following me up and down the aisles, occasionally dropping a box of cereal in the cart or asking if we can buy Oreos, we split up. So while I am picking out chicken breasts for dinner, she is a few rows down grabbing milk. Or bread. Or whole wheat spaghetti. She loves it because it makes her feel independent. And I love it because it it genuinely helpful. Everyone wins! Since I can't actually see her when she is running through the supermarket, we have talked about safety. We have talked about what she should do if someone she does not know ever grabs her. We had this conversation, not because I think that the Williamsburg Foodtown is a hotbed of child predators, but because it is important to me that my child knows what to do if anything bad should ever happen. We have also discussed how to

If you are my buddy on Facebook you probably saw me post this yesterday:  I despise this photo.  For those of you who have better things to do with your time than watch women pummel each other inside a cage, these are two female UFC fighters, Cat Zingano and Miesha Tate, right after their pre-fight weigh-in.. They fought last night in what was only the second ever women's UFC bout.  But when I look at this photo I do not think fighting. I think Spring Break. I think hot tub. I think of that awkward moment where a giant wave knocks your bikini top off and you have to stagger out of the water while simultaneously trying to cover your goodies and not drown. And guys could not possibly look at this without imagining what would happen if they untied those strings. Can you blame them?  I know that male UFC fighters often weigh in in their underwear and I would have been less disgusted had these two been wearing tiny sports bras and iity bitty bike shorts. Even the mo

If you are a good, responsible human being who cares about his or her health you probably have annual checkups.  If you, like me, are also a female, you probably have two annuals, one at your PCP and another one at the "lady parts doctor" where you happily wait in a room for over an hour to be poked and prodded in your hoo-ha. If you are really on the ball, you may even go for regular dental cleanings or vision screenings. And, if you are like me and may have to change health insurance at some time in the near future, it might occur to you to go ahead and have every part of your body checked now, just in case. So here we are in April, month of the waiting room. (Can I get a blue ribbon to wear or something?) So far this month I have been to my PCP and my OBGYN once, and the eye doctor twice. I am seeing a GI specialist at the end of the month and having my teeth cleaned on May 1st. Oh, and my daughter is seeing an orthopedist next week (an annual follow-up due to the whole

A slightly different version of this post appeared on the blog awhile back. But it seems that it is time to revisit this topic. Unfortunately. I just finished watching Friday Night Lights for the umpteenth time, a movie that is, in my opinion, one of the best ever made. The acting is superb, the music is haunting, and the editing is flawless. And, as is the case with any great sports story, the best part is the end, the part where everyone plays their heart out, leaves it all on the field....and loses. Vince Lombardi once said "Winning isn't everything- but wanting to win is." and I believe this is a fine message to send to our kids. But it is not as simple as Coach Lombardi's famous phrase makes it out to be. The reason wanting to win is important is that it pushes you to do your best. And it is this work , not the trophy that comes at the end, that is important. Try explaining that to that screaming dad at your son’s next Little League game. Every we

This past weekend we took a drive to Washington, DC. For those of you who have never been, it is a fantastic place to go with kids. All the big museums are free, there are tons of outdoor places to wander around in, and there is always something special going on. For example, this Saturday was the Cherry Blossom Kite Festival, an event that involved hundreds of people flying kites on the National Mall.  It was awesome! FYI, flying a kite is not as easy as it looks. I spent a very frustrating 45 minutes attempting to get ours into the air before Matthew showed up and used his Math voodoo on it, adjusting the strings to exactly the right shape and angle.  He is a smarty pants. Maya's favorite part of the trip was of course, the hotel pool, which she visited no fewer than four times over the weekend. We had a good deal going. First came the breakfast buffet. I then got half an hour of sipping coffee and reading the paper, long enough to get that sweet caffeine flowing thr