01/16/2020

The boys play for the varsity (7/8 grade) soccer team at school, even though they’re only in 6th grade. And last night their team won the championships! Their team was undefeated, and I’m so proud they were a part of it, and that they played with older (and bigger!) kids, even though they were nervous about it at first.

Linus’s smile after the game is the best thing about all of it. They will not smile with their teeth showing (I have no idea why, they have perfect teeth) so catching this genuine, huge smiles from the boy who was most upset about not being put on a team with his classmates is the real victory.

Some nice things

I have a longer post coming soon, but for now I wanted to highlight these two nice things people said to me on Saturday.

Nice thing #1:

Scene: The boys’ soccer game had just ended. Their team lost (barely) but they played really well.

Coach: Pam, can I talk to you over here?

Me (thinking): Uh oh, what’d I do? I’m in trouble.

Coach: I just wanted to tell you that your boys are a delight to coach. They’re so well-behaved and are really supportive to their teammates. They just have great attitudes, unlike some of the other players on the team. I just wanted to let you know.

Me (is it dusty here or what?): Thank you, that’s so kind!

END SCENE

Nice thing #2:

Scene: Cute little sewing store. I went in “real quick” to pick up some fabric since they were having a sale that ended that day. Miles came in with me, the rest of the fam was in the van outside, frothing at the mouth because I was “taking so long.” Pleeeeease. But look at the pretty fabric I got!

Fancy Uptown older lady: Did you make that shirt?

Me: This old thing? (Not really, I didn’t say that.)
Me: Yes!

FUOL: That’s really nice! What pattern is it?

I tell her. She looks carefully at the seams and admires the bias binding. I self-deprecatingly say it’s not perfect, and I only started sewing recently. She says some more complimentary things, and some of my imposter syndrome around sewing fades. (Some, not all.)

END SCENE

The first guitar recital!

Subtitle: Proudest mama in the whole wide world

A couple of weeks ago, the boys performed in their first recital. They started lessons back in April at a local school for performing arts, and they have performances twice a year – at Christmas and in the spring. The school is pretty big – there were several “concerts” throughout the day, two hours each, and there were 43 performances in this particular block. So yeah, a lot.

Fortunately, each kid (or group) only performed for a minute or two each, so it went by pretty quickly. Thank goodness because the boys were slated to go 41st.

And now the video! Don’t worry, it’s only a minute long. I pretty much wept through the whole thing, so it’s a good thing we were able to get the professional video so you don’t hear me sniffling.

A few pics:

Proud Grandee (can you see her back there?!?)

Music by triplets

The boys had their end of camp performance yesterday, and obviously I am going to record here for posterity. They were only at this camp for a week, but they learned so much! I was practically bursting with pride every time any of them were “on stage.”

Without further ado…

Oh, well, just a picture of the “pop band” performance because instead of hitting “record” I, uh, didn’t. Imagine a slower version of “Baby” by the Biebs.

Dangit. So mad at myself.

But at least I didn’t miss this one. I’m surprised you can’t hear the tears rolling down my cheeks during the second half (the first half of this video is the chorus singing “The Saints Go Marching In” but in the second half, they soloed on Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran and I was just so, so proud at how brave they were. (I remember as a kid not even wanting to sing one note by myself, just in front of the music teacher so she could figure out where to place me in the choir. There is no way I would have been able to do what the boys did.)

(Skip to about 2:30 for the better stuff.)

Then Linus and Oliver did a duo of the James Bond theme (but the teacher kept saying it was the Peter Gunn theme, which it wasn’t, and Miles was confused, which is why it’s not a trio here.) (So if you guessed James Bond in my previous post, you win!)

There was a drum performance that was by their own admission not very exciting, and a few little acting bits where you can’t really hear what they’re saying well, but take it from me, it was all adorable as shit.