Saturday Night Lights

I'm not going to go into the whole "here's why I haven't been around" meme.  It's tired and played and really you can probably guess why I haven't been around.  Kids, TMOTH, parents, work, blah blah blah.

I know- call the Waaah-mbulance.  That's not what I'm here to write about tonight.  Tonight's all about my boy.

I've written before about the unique set of challenges and joys my oldest kiddo brings.  One of the toughest challenges for him has always been around sports.  Kiddo loves to move (which isn't typical for kids with dypsraxia/ dcd) and he has an abiding love for sports- mostly soccer.  We made a choice this fall to let him try out for a travel team and boy oh boy it was a risk.  This is a team that cuts, that competes, that doesn't freaking mess around.  H knew what the risks were and he tried out.  I aged 10 years waiting for the coach to call. He made it. (Hoooray!)  He practiced his guts out and did his OT/ PT and conditioning with TMOTH (and he whined and complained that he didn't want to do his OT/PT and that TMOTH could take his conditioning and suck it) and he worked his little butt off all season long.

And right now? I'm exhausted and wind burned and just a little too happy about the fact that his team lost tonight.  It's not the loss per se- it's that they lost in the first round of the freaking playoffs.  Playoffs that were played 2 hours from home, under the lights on field turf.  Big boy playoffs.

Most importantly, playoffs where my kiddo didn't stick out as different, where he had a really close kick on goal, where the ran with the other kids and sometimes outpaced them.

After the whistle blew and the parents crossed the field to congratulate the not-quite-victors, lots of the kids on the team were crying or at least visibly upset.  Not H.  H was happy and tired and just...proud.  He was freaking glowing.  He'd taken a risk that even TMOTH and I thought might be too much and he'd succeeded. (Note to you, my friends:  next time I start to tell my kids they can't do something because I think it might be too hard, kindly offer me a nice cold glass of STFU, okay?)

We celebrated with Arby's and Blizzards at the Mall on the way home and we all passed out about 10 minutes after we got in the car (well, except for TMOTH obviously- someone had to drive you know).

I'll admit, as a football coach's kid, I always assumed that someday I'd watch my son play under the lights.  I never realized how much I wanted that- for me and for him- until tonight.

It was seriously badass.