Firsts

This week my Lil Man started his first day of Jr. High School. Remember Jr. High? I do. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago. In reality it was 20 years ago that I had my first day of Jr. High School. 20 years! Holy crap. Holy old lady crap.

I'm pretty sure I was more nervous about his first day than he was. I remember my unfond days of Jr. High School. Those were my most awkward and toturous two years of adolescense. The thought that my kid could have the same experience scares the shit out of me. Makes me want to work extra hard to make sure he doesn't suffer the same fate. I'm no expert on children or growing up, but I'll do what I can to help him feel less out of place in his own skin than I did during that time.

Along with my nerves I was also a little excited for him. He's growing up and going to have some fun experiences in the process. I warned him early in the day that I was going to be a big nerd and take pictures of him so he'd have to deal with it. He sighed at me and said OK. I decided to just take a couple and spare him the misery.

Here he is in the car on the way to school.

I asked him if he wanted me to go in to school with him when I dropped him off. I saw several other kids walking in with their parents and thought I should ask. He, of course, said no. I guess I kind of expected him to. I knew deep down inside that I need to let him handle this on his own. I never realized how hard it was going to be to let go.

My Lil Man walking into school and waving good-bye. He looks so big to me. He's probably wishing that I'd just drive away already.

I'm happy to say that his first day of school went well according to him. He said everything was fine, he made it to all his classes OK, and got through the day with no problems. He even has a couple of kids from his football team in his classes. I was relieved because he's going to a different school than most of the kids from his elementary school are attending. That means starting over with friends and knowing people. So far so good.

Lil Man's other first was for football. His first scrimmage game! Saturday morning we packed up all his gear along with some snacks and drinks to go to the park. At 8 a.m. we met with his team and they began to warm up. The first of two games started at 9 and those kids were fired up. They did pretty well in the first game and we were really proud of the team. They made a lot more mistakes in the second game, but they hung in and kept playing. It was a great experience and I took way more pictures than necessary.

Here are a couple of them:

He said he had a lot of fun yesterday. I'm really happy he's enjoying it so far. I hope it continues through the season because I'm having a lot of fun with it too. It's a huge time commitment but will be completely worth it if he gains some positive things from the experience.