Poor little guy......

Life has been super busy lately, crazy is more like it. We are in the process of trying to buy a new house, all the kids in ten thousand different sports, end of year parties, projects, plays, field trips, etc, you get the drift. I'm also very involved with my non-profit organization and we are 3/4 of the way through our families tri program which I am one of the coaches for. I am also involved in putting together our first Families Fitness Festival at Patton Park in Hamilton on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 which will include a festival, a 5k road race and an off road kids triathlon . This has been an amazing experience trying to put this together but also very humbling. I was so excited about doing all these wonderful things but nieve to think that it wasn't going to be as involved as each one of these things are. I'm so excited about seeing the end results but in the meantime I need to put my nose to the ground and get things done. All these different adventures has put my training at a bit of a disadvantage, that being said I do my best to get everything done to the best of my abilities. Training is good but I do miss my training partner Maris, hopefully we can get together real soon to bike or run, it still remains hard to do 80% of what I do alone.

Back to the title of my blog, my poor little guy. so with life being so busy I can't be everywhere that my kids need me to be everyday. I try to go to everything that they do, I try to make home meals every day and night, be at every performance, etc.... but sometimes it just can't happen. Today was my son Alexs swim meet ( not his first) but a big one, there were some expectations of his performances because he has been swimming so well lately. It was also my daughter Shea's first swim meet which included her diving off the blocks for the first time. Well, unfortunately mommy wasn't able to go today because she had to work, I was at the track with my tri families and Phil was at the pool with the kids. My mom was kind enough to come up and bring my little guy to his soccer game and hold fort at the house until I got home. Well, I guess Alex had a tough morning, he was really nervous and scared to swim, he didn't want to go. I got about 10 phone calls throughout the morning and in the end he didn't swim. It was hard to talk to him because he was crying. I told him I would speak to him when he got home.

The reasons why he probably didn't swim:
1. Late practice yesterday to practice starts and turns, it was over at 8pm, he didn't go to bed until after 9p
2. He had to wake up early to go and he was exhausted
3. I wasn't going to be there
4. His friend and co-swimmer Stephan wasn't able to swim

I think all of these factors played into him not being mentally prepared for the race and my heart broke for him that I wasn't there to help him through this.

What I did:

I gave him lots of hugs and told him I wasn't upset. I told him that I took some responsibility for what happened today and that in the end swimming and sports are supposed to be fun and not be upsetting. That not only do you have to prepare yourself physically but you also have to prepare yourself mentally and I failed at helping him with this. He gave me lots of hugs, apologized to me and said he will try real hard the next time. I said as long as he " tries" and that he is having fun that its all that matters. The main thing he needed to know was that mommy and daddy love him and are not mad at him but very proud that he stayed to watch his sister swim and support his team and in the end he still wants to swim and he wants to try harder. This was a very proud moment for mommy and hopefully a good lesson for both of us. In the end he is still only 7 ( soon to be 8) but very young to take sports so seriously. Life right now is supposed to fun for them, I was so sad I couldn't help him today.

Anyway, its better now and hopefully it wont happen again.

A nice run tomorrow followed by many hours of flag football, back to the grind.