Three Nerds and a Jock.

When I was a young girl (of the 50's), I did not show a lot of academic success and was total clutz so my career options were either secretarial or being a stay at home mom. When I decided to go into nursing, my father fell into a depression, sure that I would fail and miss the opportunity to find a good husband while I was up to my ears in biology books. The good news is that we've come a long way baby...women now have so much to chose from...in addition to finding the great guy and pushing out a few babies.

From early on, we've looked for clues to identify our kids potential and natural talents so we could support them in a direction that would hopefully lead them to success. Lil surprised us early on by being much more athletic than we expected from our little rickets affected daughter but had much more difficulty processing information and retaining it to memory. So at 10, we pretty much accepted that athletics was going to be her thing until she pulled off straight A's in grade 5...math, science, social studies. Shock and awe.

Lil is all fired up about returning to swim team next week...up a notch to 5 practices a week, some weight training and a lot stiffer competition. She's proud to be the family jock and has dreams of gold medals although Tony is convinced that running is her real talent. She's also pretty pumped about getting back to school, although we hear about gym and track practice before she mentions her science homework.

"We did a test of learning styles at school today and I think I am a 'logical' learner" she announced in the car this morning. Now I have lots of descriptives of Lil's way of processing information and none of them would include logic. Last week I handed her a bag of three heads of romaine lettuce to prepare the salad for dinner with instructions to use about half of the lettuce. On my return, she had cut the bottom half off each head to prepare the salad leaving me shaking my head about her logical abilities. "You did tell her to use half the lettuce and she just had a different approach" Tony laughed.

Grace remains our little mystery...just when we think we have her figured out, she switches gears. Early on we had her language skills assessed because she just didn't say much. What we discovered is that she knows language but choses to use it when she has something important to say. In day care the teachers encouraged me to put Grace in dance or gymnastics because she danced like a Motown girl every time they had a class party. Asked to perform, the answer from Grace was always no but her natural gait seemed to be a cartwheel. So when we put her in kinder gymnastics she was elevated up the ranks quickly as the coach felt she had enormous natural talent. Six hours of practice a week, lots of blisters on the little hands and foot stomping fatigue made us rethink how hard we should be "supporting" her in her gymnastics pursuits. When we thought to discuss it with her more fully, she said, "I'm going to be a scientist so I don't want to take gymnastics." (Given her affinity for my microscope and the collection of bugs I find in her hoody pockets each day, we should have seen it coming.) "And I'm Chinese, so I'd like to take Chinese language classes." More shock and awe.

In the spirit of being well rounded, we've put her back in 2 hours of recreational gymnastics, her city swim class, her beloved piano class, and if she is handling it all ok, will sign her up for Mad Science and Mandarin classes. On the questionnaire sent home about our expectations for Grace's grade 1 education, I wrote "a Phd in microbiology".

I knew Tony was a nerd from day one, which is what attracted me to him...but lately, he too has become a bit of a jock. Between golfing and weight lifting, he's become a big strong man with a great nerdy mind. Best of both worlds from where I'm standing...hot and smart.

I was telling a sperm joke at work recently, and our receptionist explained to the new employee...she is such a nerd. I was completely shocked by this as I've always seen myself as a bit of a social butterfly, deserving of my blond hair colour. "I wasn't a nerd until I met Tony" I defended and everyone shook their heads sadly. "You've always been a nerd"

"You follow the 'I fucking love science' facebook page and read research constantly" Tony reminded me. OMG. I took an IQ test...I scored 128. In my defence I also read Janet Evanovich religiously and have weight trained myself into having shoulders that the average guy would be jealous of. My self image put me in an entirely different box...so much for my assessment skills.

So while this post is called 3 nerds and a jock, on a given day, we're not really sure who's wearing which name tag as we float between gold medal and nobel prize fantasies. If I were to guess, Lil will be involved in sports medicine in the future, Gracie will be hanging from branches in the jungle tracking down microbes to study. Tony and I will be in the world body building competition when we are 80...because there won't be much competition. But all of these predictions my be completely off base so you'll just have to stay posted.