Lego my.....leg

He asked for two toaster waffles.

On a normal day he wants one.
Some days he eats something completely random for breakfast, like a half-cup of corn chips.
Other days he balks at the idea of ingesting something and lumbers around the living room with a face like a Manhattan socialite whose coffee has not yet finished percolating.

This morning though, he polished off the first Eggo in ten seconds and demanded another.

I should have known.

We talked it up a lot.
"Honey, you are SUCH a big boy playing soccer now! Look at you with your big boy shin guards built right into the sock! And brand new cleats, those are some damn good looking cleats! You are going to have so much fun! SO.MUCH.FUN. Can you imagine it? The fun you are going to have? Because you are you know, going to have that fun. All you gotta do is just GET.OUT.ON.THE.FIELD. Just make it to the field."

Well.
He did not get out on the field. Not for the game anyway. Oh, the practice the night before the game, he played the shit out of that field. Aside from a few minor incidents involving roughing a member of his own team, he did awesome. He listened. He attempted at times to kick the ball and was seemingly having the time of his life. I was so excited.

The next morning he asked for two toaster waffles and every subsequent event following the digestion of that second waffle found me digging my fingernails into the soft padding of my palm.

Immediately after arriving on the field I could sense the tension in tiny body spread, right down the tips of his fingers that clutched mine with crippling force. It was intimidating. The practice that he had attended the night before was on a different field, with only the children from his team present. This was totally different. There were LOTS of kids and not just on his field. The fields were packed and each one contained multi-colored chaos.

Begrudgingly, he allowed me to take off the shirt that he had arrived in to change into the team jersey. And THAT was where the compliance ended. The coach called the team together for some pre-game praying action and Brae wouldn't budge. Then the team lined up on the side of the field, the first group of players marched out into the green and Brae lassoed himself to my leg.

'Um, Brae? Don't you want to play soccer today'
'Wait, whats today?'
'Saturday, you know GAME DAY, Saturday'
'I'll play on Sunday'
'Well, NO you wont play on Sunday'
'Why not?!'
'Because your games are held on Saturday, you have to play on Saturday. Today. Right now. Are you planning on detaching yourself from my calf anytime soon?'

He was not.

And that was how our first soccer game went down. Sidelined ridden, we watched as the rest of the kids on team Nova laughed and kicked their way around the field as I held a weeping pre-schooler who couldn't decide if the benefits of joining in on their reindeer games outweighed the cost of cutting the cord between us. In the end it did not.

Next week we'll try again. With one waffle.