A Week of Firsts

This week is a week of several firsts for my little family. First of all, I'm back full-time at work after the holiday. It's not exactly a picnic, and I'm relearning how much I absolutely love getting up at 5 am.

For my oldest son, he started basketball for the first time on Monday night. He has no prior experience and barely knows the rules to the game. During the practice, he performed a little better than expected, and really seemed to enjoy being out on the court. It was quite funny watching him (and I know he felt silly) standing out there bouncing with his knees slightly bent and his arms in the typical basketball defensive position. He's got a lot of learning to do, but what matters is that he enjoys himself and I'm confident he will. His first game is Saturday and with only one practice under his belt, it should be very interesting.

For my daughter, she started gymnastics yesterday. It's all new to her, too, and luckily we discovered her class is actually more about tumbling and less about performing on any of the gymnastics equipment. This was a relief to us since we weren't sure we wanted her doing any of the complicated stuff until she learns to do a cartwheel. She had an absolutely wonderful time during her lesson. She was so very excited to be there and to do everything that she threw her whole self into it. From a parent's perspective, my wife described her kindly as a "spaz". This morning, she woke up with every muscle in her body below her neck being sore. She's in quite a bit of pain from stretching and using muscles she didn't even know she had, but she'll get over it -- as loudly and whiningly (is that a word?) as she can.

The up-side of this week is that it's been a lot of fun for everybody. The downside is that my oldest son is up late two nights in a row, and yesterday he nearly had a complete meltdown since he was so tired. For an eight-year-old, sometimes he acts just like a four-year-old. I keep hoping he'll grow out of the crying and complaining, but others assure me that won't happen until he's, like, thirty or something. (Thanks, people! You're a lot of comfort!)

So far, it's been a pretty interesting week.