Mom Fail, my version . . .

A couple of weeks ago, a blog-friend of mine posted a story where she mentioned the "Fail Blog" .  Some funny stuff, on that there blog. 

She went on to post about how there are some things in life where she feels like she's failed.
(Who hasn't felt like that, once in a while -or more often- like I do almost every day...)

And I started to leave a comment  . . .
but it got so long that it inspired a post of my own.

I started thinking about a Major Fail I recently had as a mom.

My boys. Isaac and Tanner, participated this spring in our grade school's cross-country program (which happened to be organized and coached by two good friends of mine)

Each Tuesday and Thursday they looked forward to going to practice, especially my kindergartner, Tanner. 

Every day he'd ask,
"Mom, do I get to go to Cross-Country today?"

Then at the end of the season, about a half-dozen of the local grade schools got together to give the kids a chance to compete.

The Big Cross-Country meet!

Kindergartners at the starting line...

Tanner was so excited.  He had done well on his time trials with his kindergarten classmates, and now he'd get to run with a whole bunch of kids his age!   He got a name tag pinned to his shirt that the official at the finish line could grab and write his finish results on. 

This is where I Mom-Failed.

This tag was on the front of his shirt, and since he kept messing with it, I thought it would be a good idea to put it on his back.  Out of sight out of mind, right?

The problem with what I did was exactly where I pinned it on his back.  As he ran around the field, the wind was at his back, and the tag kept blowing up and hitting him in the ear.  He kept batting it away, and was getting really mad at it, all the while doing really well in the race, in a cluster of 3 kids or so at the front of the  pack. 

The really bad thing was, that while he was batting it away and being distracted and running really fast, this half-mile track was unfamiliar and had trees in one section.  Add to that the fact that he's nearly blind in one eye. 

Anyway, as he was batting and getting mad and running, he didn't see what was in the way, and ran BAM SMACK into a dang tree. 

And he was so upset that it took a couple people to convince him to get going again...and he finished. But later, when he found out that only the kids who placed got a ribbon, and not everyone like he thought, he said "all that practicing and running, all of that was just for NOTHING!"

My heart just br-o-ke.   (who knew how important that little ribbon was to him?)

Because I had pinned the tag on his back.

And I wanted him to love to run, because he loves sports and that is one that he really could be successful at, given his peripheral-vision challenge and all. 

Mom Fail. 

But, as a lot of things that we've failed at on one day, by the next, they can be forgotten, and we can move on.

Because the next day, I heard the much-repeated phrase from my little guy.

"Mom, do I get to go to Cross-Country today?"

Isaac - almost at the finish line....