So many stories, so little time

It has been a whirlwind the past couple weeks. Lots going on and no time to blog about it. I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself, "That would make a great blog post", but I just haven't sat down to type it all down.

As I collect all my thoughts - and there are many - I thought I would post this quickly written story I sent in as my President's letter for the POTATO group.

Enjoy.
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As parents we try to teach our children all we can: the difference between right and wrong; keep your fingers out of the outlets, say “please” and “thank you”, don’t run with scissors. Sometimes our children surprise us along the way and teach us a little something. This recently happened to me.

My 5-year-old girls are playing soccer. Yep – I’m a soccer mom and proud of it! Last year we annihilated every team we played (not that we kept score, because we aren’t supposed to do that at their age – yeah, right). Consequently, the league is making us play several 6-year-old teams this year to help even out the playing field a bit. This past Saturday we played one of those 6-year-old teams. They were bigger and seemed WAY more organized, but we were holding our own and staying in the fight. Fight is precisely the right word. One of the little brats – oops, sorry – I mean angelic players from the other team started hurling himself in front of our players making them trip. He did this repeatedly without his coach saying a word. Of course, the parents of the kids on our team had a few choice words, but we kept the comments to ourselves. Then another little monster – sorry – precious child on the other team started shoving kids – MY KIDS! OH HECK NO!!!!!

The first time I let it slide. Ashlyn stared the boy down and kept on running. The second time he pushed her right in front of his coach. I thought for sure the coach or the obviously blind ref would say something to this kid, but the game kept going. The third time he did it in front of me. BAD. MOVE.

I jumped from my luxurious lawn chair and screamed (no exaggeration here – I truly screamed) “NO, you will NOT do that to her!” That kid turned stark white and everyone went silent. At this point my daughter was in tears as he had pushed her to the ground and I rushed to pick her up. As I held her in my arms I told the ref and the coaches they had better do something about the pushing and shoving.

Then I tended to my daughter. I was prepared to hold her the rest of the game and buy her every flavor of snow cone they had at the concession stand. I asked her repeatedly if she was okay. She started telling me, “no, mommy, no”. I didn’t understand. And then she made it crystal clear. “No mommy. I don’t want anything. I want to get back in the game.”

My little hero didn’t want to be consoled. She wanted to get her tail back into that game to show that other team what she was made of. And she did. We beat that 6-year-old team 2 to 1. And I learned that my girls can handle many things on their own now. I still have a lot to teach them, but I will now pay more attention to the lessons they can teach me along the way.