From Our Front Porch You can See.....: My nerves or his nerves?

Today was the BIGGEST day yet in the life of a seven-year old boy. I woke him up and as I was helping him get his belt in the belt loops of his baseball pants I thought to myself....When did you grow up? I realized that he has gone from playing "SANDLOT" baseball with the neighbor kids, when there were no houses around here to trying out for a 9 and under baseball tournament team in what seems to be overnight. My nerves kicked in and I asked him if he was at all nervous? With confidence in his voice he said, "nope". So I decided I would just be nervous for him and all would work out the way it was supposed to work out.

We get to the ball field and get him registered, we go through the whole "This is what is going to happen, this is how it is going to work, it's not a perfect system yet, etc." speech and FINALLY they tell us what field we will be on. Off he goes running full speed ahead ready to show the world what he can do. Reece goes to play on the playground behind me, Ellee is sound asleep in her stroller, and I am sitting in my chair watching my oldest son living his 7-year old dream. My eyes welled up with tears because he had more determination than any grown man playing in the Majors. I quickly wiped them away so no one would see and watched proudly and listened even more proudly, as people who didn't know he was my son talked about him. He made an amazing throw from third to first and I yelled, as any proud Mom would do, "Good job Caden!" and this man (I don't know the guy, so for blogging purposes we will call him BOB) sitting on the bleachers asked if he was my son. I'm sure I was beaming from ear to ear and proudly I said, "He is my son." They said, that he was so small and asked me how old he was and I told him that he was 7 and as many times in the past they said, "Seriously?!?!" I said yes and Bob continued to tell me how amazing he was to watch and that he looked like a miniature Chipper Jones. Being the Baseball Mom that I am have heard the name before, but had absolutely no idea who Chipper Jones was or is, but if that is who Caden reminded him of and the way he was previously talking about Caden (before Bob knew he was my son) then I decided it couldn't be all bad.

So Caden did his thing; He fielded the ball, threw the ball, caught the ball and now it was his time to hit the ball. He got up there still swinging his T-ball bat, stood on the left side of the plate, and hit the ball 3 times towards the 2nd baseman like it was no big deal. Then it was time to bunt...Oh no! I thought, "This makes me nervous." He got up there moved his bat around and hit 3 of those, too. My pride got a little bigger and Caden just stayed Caden. The amazing thing about him is he thinks that every kid in the world is just like him and can play baseball or any sport that he plays for that matter, as well as he does and he doesn't even realize that he has a gift.

So when it was over, I sighed a HUGE sigh of relief, shoved all of his stuff back in his bat pack and we headed for home. On the way home I asked him how he thought he did and he looked at me and said, I think I did ok and they told me we would know in a week or so who made it and who didn't. So for one more week I will sit with my bundle of nerves for him and for one more week I will sit and try to think of motherly wisdom to tell him, should he get the news that he didn't make it. Hopefully, I will be wasting my time on the motherly wisdom part, but if I'm not I can honestly say that I couldn't be more proud of him not because he is an amazing athlete (which I am proud of, too) but because he is Caden, the amazing kid with amazing heart.