Moming is hard. We all feel it. There’s advocacy groups dedicated to uniting us. Yet it still feels so isolating. No one is as excited about your kid’s accomplishments as you, and no one is as hurt as you are for your kid when they’re down`. As a mother of 3 very different children, I fail a lot. But I have a lot of joys as well. The only thing that makes it less isolating is knowing someone relates. Relates to the ups as well as the downs. For me, this week was a down week.
I coach my 4 (F) and 5 (M) kids’ soccer team. As you can probably imagine, its a lot. Like a whole hell of a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I love coaching, especially soccer. I’m not the kind of mom who can sit on the sidelines. A “helicopter mom” if you will. And that’s fine, I will own that, it’s who I am. So I always volunteer to coach, but this year feels different. There was a record number of three year old’s signed up and my team consisted of most of them. I was graced with 2 five year old’s however, my own son and a girl who insists she hates soccer and does not want to play. ‘
My son lives for sports. He is just that kind of kid. But my daughter could not care any less for it. She convinced me during sign ups that she wanted to play this year, and forty-five dollars later and she’s laying on the field crying. She says she just hates me coaching and wants a new team so there’s that.
Then picture day comes. The group we play for put out an organized schedule with times for each team to get their pictures to make it as painless as possible. We were scheduled for ten minutes after our initial practice time. Normally, no one practices on picture day because it is stressful enough and most parents want a decent picture of their kid without grass stains on their knees. Knowing I had a lot of kids who had never played before, I decided we would show up for our practice time just in case anyone else did. If they did, cool we will have some fun and get pictures. If they didn’t, even better.
I showed up to a field full of well dressed and primped three year old’s bored and hungry (they’re always hungry, right?). We chaotically played some games and when they were no longer listening, we made our way to the photographer. I quickly realized the photographer was approximately 2 teams behind schedule already. So I gathered my team in a circle for duck, duck, goose. That went well for about ten minutes until my daughter decided she wanted to be the only ducker. Great. As I do my best to explain to her that everyone wants a turn and playing together means playing together, the whole works, everything in my nice mom tool box, she just gets angrier. Blame it on the hunger but she was throwing a fit. She yanks out her pig tails, untucks her shirt and says “No! I’m not getting my picture taken!”. Now I’m no stranger to a tantrum, so I tell her that’s not my favorite choice but it is hers to make and try to move forward.
In the midst's of her anger the photographer approaches me and tells me since my team is here and ready she would just begin taking our pictures (skipping a whole team). Yes. Perfect, we can get this over with. The photographer realizes my daughter is still in meltdown mode and starts individuals instead of the team photo to buy me some time. As I’m telling my daughter, it is now or never and we will be moving on without her, the coach we skipped calls my name. Sh*t. “Are they ready for us?” the other coach shortly calls to me. Ugh. I can’t lie so I’ll just blame the photographer. “Yeah, well the photographer just keeps moving so she’s grabbing some of my kids’ photos”. At this point, I turn my attention back to my own children. My daughter finally changed her mind! I bend over to fix her hair quickly and hope with all my might we can get this over with. I finish my daughters last pig tail and go to stand up at the exact moment my son decided it was time for a surprise piggy back ride. His chin hit my back at the perfect moment to clench his jaw and he falls to the ground screaming. As soon as I turn around to grab him, a tooth popped out of his mouth into my hand. This cannot be happening. No it is. This is absolutely happening.
He’s crying and bleeding and I rush him to the make-shift bathroom on the field leaving my daughter behind. I grabbed as much toilet paper as I could and try to fix it. Literally the only “lucky” thing that happened was that there was not already a line for the bathroom. I take him back to where my daughter was (happily) playing and sat on this dirt/grass hill. He’s just bawling. An absolute mess. I just want to go home. It’s not worth it at this point. But I’m the freaking coach. As he cries and bleeds into toilet paper I look up to see the photographer has fully skipped us again and moved to the other team. The rest of the parents of my team just standing there annoyed. Well, we have time now. Almost thirty minutes later and he’s still crying and the other team is finishing up.
This was the first tooth he lost, and it was definitely not ready to come out. He just has moist toilet paper hanging everywhere. One dad walked up and offered help, but, as he did not have any ice in his pockets, I didn’t think there was anything he could do. “You don’t have to do this, we can just go home” I said to my son. But, as I said, he lives for sports and wanted to stay. The photographer looks to my team and offers to start again. Yes. Absolutely. She realizes my son is still not looking great and starts individuals again. Calls on my daughter. What? Where did she go? She was sitting at the bottom of the hill playing in dirt. Wiping it on her already slobbery mouth. AHHHHH. Keeping all my swear words in my head, I get her up to get her pictures and start doing my best to wipe her face. This patient photographer jokingly says, “aw, you were having some fun with chocolate I see!” My god sent of a child turns to the photographer with all the attitude in the entire world and giggles, “nope, dirt!” Are you kidding me girl? You couldn’t just let that one stay in your head? “Honestly, it is what it is” I said to the photographer and laugh. Its honestly the only thing I could do except cry.
Finally, the photographer says it’s time for team pictures. We get up there and my son will not let me go nor close his mouth all the way. And, at this point, I meant what I said, it is what it is. So I held him and did my best to get him to close his mouth. We proudly took our horrible pictures as our audience visibly cringed for our team.
My son stayed for his individuals and as I tried one last time to get him to just close his mouth, the photographer literally recognized him from his previous seasons (plus he takes super cute pictures) and tried to convince him as well. She did her best to help and took multiple pictures of me just holding him.
It is what it is. That gets me through most days, and hopefully this story of multiple catastrophic events within a couple hours helps you.