49/52: Goals, goals, goals - for the love of the game

A portrait of my children once a week every week in 2014

I never want to be one of those parents who brags all the time about how good her kids are at x or y. I was absolutely useless at sports growing up - I'm still scared when any balls come flying at me whether it be in football, cricket or any other ball game. Badminton was my thing - I think I enjoyed it because even if you did get hit with the shuttlecock there was no real danger of getting properly hurt. And when I recall the fact Mark has broken his arm twice since coming to NZ, once when a cricket ball hit him and the other time when a football hit his wrist last year - I feel somewhat justified in my fear of flying balls!

That being said, our boys have developed a real love of football - and I have Mark to thank for that for getting them involved so early in Little Dribblers and more recently in a local winter football club. Noah was pretty timid in the early days, and has really only come into his own on the field the past two years - he's really tall for his age and has learnt to use his size to his advantage on the field. (And I totally forgot to get any photos of Noah playing this week - too focused on encouraging him from the sidelines!)

Mylo on the other hand, well he was wanting to kick anything that moved before he could even walk properly, and growing up in his brother's shadow it was inevitable that he would start playing at some point. I don't know that much about football, but Mark tells me that having a good left foot is a fairly rare skill in football, and despite not being a leftie - Mylo seems to love kicking with this foot!

This year, both the boys are playing in Friday football teams with kids from their class at school. This means that this mama has to stand on the sidelines at the notoriously windy and freezing cold Ian Galloway park for two hours on a Friday afternoon both this term and next. We are about seven weeks into the season and we are yet to have a warm and windless afternoon - the past two weeks have been utterly bitter - so much so that Mylo and I had to retreat to the car between games for a bit of respite one of the weeks. Last week I even had two jackets on (one was a puffer!) that's how cold it can get and it's meant to be SUMMER football - ha de ha ha!

Last week both the boys had great games though - Mylo scored 7 out of his team's 8 goals and it was great to see him be a leader on the field amongst his classmates. Noah also scored 4 goals out of his team's 5 goals so we had two happy and proud guys who came home that night. I would be lying if I said I wasn't totally stoked and super proud of their efforts - but I love watching them play even when they don't score any goals at all - coming from this ball-scared girly I find the fact they are on the field getting so stuck in pretty awesome just in itself!