Listen To Your Mom, Mila

When I made all of the plans for Cheer Nationals in Knoxville, the world was wildly different than it is now. As with all things for the past year and a half, the frickin pandemic just had to roll right into town and ruin all of the fun. I went from woooo! Things are headed in the right direction! To NOPE.

Anybody who knows me knows those plans weren't made until the last possible second. That's how quickly I went from Wooo! to NOPE. It was like three days. Alas, that is what happens when pediatric COVID cases suddenly skyrocket. All of that is to say that I was cool with taking Mila along for the trip until suddenly I had to be wary of everything because that child. THAT CHILD.

Mila is sunshine on a rainy day, but she's also the kid I once told to stop licking the bathroom wall at Target. Frankly, I can't wait to see what terrible ideas she will have in the future because she'll have a lot of great ideas in between. That's who she is.

So, I went from a list of big plans in Knoxville and Pigeon Forge to a much smaller list that was restricted to the outdoors and not-crowded places. We had two half-days to fill (Alexis had to report at 5:00 pm for cheer both of those days), but couldn't do a ton of walking and such because I refuse to be responsible for a cheerleader having tired legs.

What do you do when you can't wander through an arcade or museum or anything like that? How do you avoid humanity at a time when humanity is at its worst? How do you make sure your cheerleader is ready to go while keeping your unvaccinated Tiny Human safe?

You go on a helicopter ride, of course.

We are not going to talk about the fact that our helicopter pilot was like 12 years old. He was licensed and stuff. More importantly, the place wasn't weird about it when I asked if our pilot was vaccinated and HERE WE ARE, FOLKS. I now live in a world where I have to ask if a service provider is vaccinated.

This timeline is stupid.

ANYWAY. I don't tell the girls when I'm making plans like that. I genuinely enjoy torturing them with surprises, plus I like to condense the time for a reaction just in case the reaction is not the one I expected.

See also: Mila.

Mila was VERY NOT OKAY with the idea of going up in a helicopter. Yes, the Target bathroom wall licker does have a sense of self-preservation, but she draws the line at flying in a perfectly safe helicopter, apparently. The same kid teetered on the edge of a waterfall that same day, but WHATEVER. Safety first, I guess!

We convinced Mila to be okay with the whole thing by telling her we could pretend to be spies. Also, IMAGINE WHAT YOUR FRIENDS WILL SAY! That did it for her. Thinking about how she will eventually tell her friends that she got to be a spy on a helicopter was enough for the kid to crawl aboard and buckle her seatbelt. She did it willingly, albeit with a few tears in her eyes and a death grip on my hand.

It lasted about 30 seconds. Once we were in the air, Mila shoved my hand away and turned into one of those Garfield window things. She was GLUED to the window, happily looking out at the golf course and mountains and all of the things. It turned into 30 of the best minutes of her life, a fact which she will tell you over and over and over if you want to listen.

The best part, though? It gave me a very clear example of MOM IS ALWAYS RIGHT. I said it would be fun. It was fun. I am never wrong about these things. So, when you hear me randomly mention a helicopter to Mila at least once a week for the next several years? That's why. I'm reminding her that I'm always right about these sorts of things.

That's a Wrap on Cheer Season

Obviously, we've been out of town for the past few days because of Cheer Nationals. I'll cut to the chase - third place. That's where Alexis' team ended up. It's not as good as they had hoped, but it's certainly nothing to be ashamed of, so welp. That's that.

It's still crazy to me that this is the same team that won Nationals a few years ago after a season of being TERRIBLE. Alexis will tell you that, btw. She knew they were bad then and she will tell you that they were bad now, but they all pulled together and did their absolute best on the same day at the same time and it all worked. It will forever go down as one of those magical moments in her life.

This year didn't have the same magic. The team was actually REALLY good this year, but they made a couple of small mistakes and other teams were better than really good. And so it goes.

There's also the whole COVID cloud this year. While dance nationals happened to fall in that sweet spot when numbers were down, cheer nationals came along just as things are starting to get ugly again. Months ago it seemed wise that the competition had been moved to Knoxville instead of Nashville (to avoid other events) and it seemed like Tennessee was a decent choice. Now it's ... ugh.

Tennesee, y'all need to figure this whole thing out and quick. You can pretend there's no pandemic, but Miss Rona doesn't care that you don't want to know about her. She's coming for you. The 20% vaccination rates and near 0% mask compliance rates are not going to save you.

That said, the mask compliance rate at the cheer event was actually pretty good. There were definitely a lot of chin diapers floating around and a few blatant refusals to comply with the event mandate (masks were required for everyone the whole time, except the athletes while actually competing), but mostly people had it figured out.

We won't talk about the awards portion of the festivities. Things got messy right around then, which is why Mila and I disappeared. Watching one kid get a third place medal isn't worth another kid getting exposed to tons of potential virus monsters. And can I just say that thinking about those types of tradeoffs has me so freakin exhausted?

So exhausted.

If everybody who can would just get vaccinated, life would be far less complicated. Alas.

Here's to hoping next year comes with a championship and a lot less stress. Please and thank you.

Third Place at Nationals? Third Place at Nationals.