fears and fearlessness

I signed Blue up for that cheerleading/gymnastics class today! And I signed both of the kids up for a soccer class called PeeWee Kickers. It starts next week. It is a very small group of kids and they are all 3 or 4 years old, so Blue and the Lion can be in the same group. Which I think will be nice for Lion, who is a bit nervous about striking out on his own sometimes.

It is funny. Most of the time, he is the leader. When I ask them any kind of question, whenever they have to make a decision, like what they want for lunch or whether they want their sandwiches cut into rectangles or triangles, Blue always defers to the Lion. She either waits for him to answer and echoes his decision, or she changes her mind once he answers me. And when they are playing he tends to call the shots. It's pretty predictable.

But when it comes to doing something independent of each other, like going off to school or taking swimming lessons, Blue is the fearless one. She marched right into preschool on her first day without even looking back to wave at me. But Lion is very nervous about/obsessed with the very idea of preschool. And he cried the first couple of swim classes.

When we went to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party a few weeks ago, the Lion and I got there before Daddy and Blue, who were out on a hike together.  Lion only went into a few rides, and those were the little toddler rides. He was fascinated by the huge hamster-cage maze of tunnels but he wanted nothing to do with them until Blue arrived. She burst onto the scene and tried every single crazyass ride in the place and the minute she climbed up into that tunnel, Lion was in there after her.

I love that Blue is so brave. Because I have never been. I sucked at sports because I was always afraid of getting hurt. Especially something like soccer, where all the kids are kicking at the same ball. I would hang back, afraid someone would kick me in the shin or something. And I hate rollercoasters. All rides, really. So I love that my daughter will be one of those girls who loves rides. She already cannot wait to go to Disney World next year and try everything.

The Lion, on the other hand, is like me. We talk about Disney World all the time and we watch the promotional DVD and he tells me which attractions he wants to see and which ones he emphatically does not want anything to do with. As a kid who was constantly teased about avoiding all of the rides at Kings Dominion, I know what it is like and I tell him over and over, "If you don't want to go on a ride, you don't have to." I will never forget when I went to Kings Dominion with my Girl Scout troop as a little kid and they made me go on the Log Flume ride because everyone else wanted to go on it. The log we were riding in was so high off the ground and I remember I was crying my eyes out by the end of the ride. I will never force my kids to do something "fun" that they are not comfortable doing!