Daily Diary: Alex’s 1st Long Course Swim Meet

As every mother of more than one child knows, it’s not always easy being the 2nd, 3rd, 4th… and so on child.

There can be lots of comparing to the older siblings.

There’s one thing I will say about my sons – they all LOVE each other more than anything in the world. It’s something my husband and I feel VERY blessed about. They care about each other. They’re happy for each other. They genuinely love each other. It’s a beautiful thing to see. Don’t get me wrong – they do fight like brothers – but there’s a deep love there, something that warms my heart and my soul. The best thing on earth my husband and I ever did was give our sons each other, and we’re excited to add to our family.

This past weekend William and Alex had their 1st long course meet of the year for their swim team. This was William’s 2nd year doing long course, but it was Alex’s VERY 1st time. The difference between short course season and long course season is the length of the pool. Long course is meters and it’s the same length as the Olympics you see on TV – which means – it’s LONG, very LONG.

I’ve blogged about William’s success in swimming on my blog before many times. He loves swimming and he’s really taken to it like a fish to water. The kid loves to compete more than anything in the world and right now, at this time in his life, he’s enjoying some success in the pool. I always tell him – you never know who is gunning for you… because he has kids he’s gunning for in the pool… so you can never, ever sit back and just relax, you’ve always got to work hard and hard and harder. With William, I can talk that way and he understands and it fuels him.

For our Alex, every time someone meets him – they always ask – “Oh – another swimmer?”

It kills me because all of our kids are different. Alex doesn’t love swimming right now as much as William. He likes it, he doesn’t love it. When we told him long course season was going to start this weekend with a meet, he wasn’t exactly happy. He gets nervous about swimming long laps of the long course pool. It broke my heart to see him so nervous and so anxious about swimming. As a former swimmer myself, I get it.

Alex was glued to me and my husband before every race yesterday. He had 2 things to swim – 50 meter backstroke and 100 meter freestyle. My heart was in my throat because all he wanted to do was beat someone and finish.

I’m excited to say… he finished both races with flying colors and beat someone in the 100 meter freestyle yesterday. You would have thought the little guy won the Olympics when he got out of the water. He was beaming and so proud of himself. William did exceptionally well yesterday, but I gotta say – my husband and I were both so proud of Alex.

He did it!