back at rugby

I watched Jamie at Rugby this week, I can’t believe how much he is changing – how fast he has grown up.

My youngest is 5 and has always been a little young for his age. I suppose it’s unfair to say that because I can only compare him to Daniel and Dan has always been very forward and confident. This confidence has meant that Daniel always seemed older than he was and the lack of which has caused us to see Jamie as much younger than he is. Jamie only just has his birthday before the School year starts and so he is about the youngest in his class and these things show up at that age.

His immaturity made us quite nervous at the start of the year; we worried quite a lot about how he would get on. As with most kids he coped just fine. In fact he has absolutely blossomed in such a short few weeks. Thanks to the all the work we have done and that his nursery did that we held him back at instead of pushing him into School before he was ready, Jamie’s confidence has rocketed. All that preparation to get Jamie to this stage has worked and now – luckily, he has a good teacher who clearly knows how to get the best of him because he absolutely loves it.

All of a sudden Jamie will run into new places ahead of us, instead of clinging onto a hand and hiding behind us. Suddenly I can tell him that his friends are ‘over there’ and Jamie will run over to join them. This is great to see, I love seeing this new confident boy running about making friends.

One place where this confidence is most prevalent is at the rugby. If you remember I talked about his first week playing rugby before about how I really wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to cope. Jamie certainly has coped and then some! When we arrive now he is looking up the pitch to find his team and as soon as he spots them he is off. Jamie runs straight over and joins in long before I get there to help. This may seem ordinary to you, nothing special at all, but to me it is and I love it. His head goes down and he just runs about joining in with the bigger kids that are playing.

The only thing that has not changed is that Jamie still has no clue whatsoever what he is doing. My boy’s comedic timing is amazing. I can count 2 seconds in my head between the rest of the team runs by with the ball and Jamie running past laughing and holding his tags out to his sides like they are a skirt. If I see the team running to the left I know that Jamie will run to the right smiling at the sight of a bit of mud on his knees. As the boys run past him I can see his look of delight when he nearly gets their tag and especially if he gets knocked over, he just comes up laughing at the thought of doing a bit of wrestling and grabs their feet as they try and get away.

My son has a long way to go before he even grasps the first concept of how to play this crazy game; who cares? I couldn’t care less if he is any good at it because what I do know is that he loves it. The smiling the laughing the giggling and the skipping all tell me that my son is happy, and that will do nicely.