Proud, well travelled, and a bit damp.

Today we went to Seven Hills.  In the rain.  Along the M2 which was enjoying some Diamond Jubilee long weekend roadworks and only had one lane in either direction for much of it's length.

What fun it was.

We were going to Sarah's first gym comp.  Mike and I are as surprised as can be that we can create someone who could even be considered a starter for a gym comp.  We are the least flexible people in the world.  I have never ever been able to touch my toes.  Not even when I was 5.  He is ever so slightly more flexible.  I think he last touched his toes when he was like, 10.

A level of flexibility to make the eyes water, even for a statue.

Considering our sum total of sports experience equals lots of rugby, a tiny bit of swimming and...nothing, we were pretty excited regarding the gym thing, and proud as punch of our girl.  Although the thought of driving 40 kms through Sydney on a Sunday evening dampened our enthusiasm slightly.  


Nevertheless, out we drove, through the rain, in the gathering dark for our spot at 4:45.

Our session had four teams with 5-6 kids working on 4 apparatus (oh how far I've come with the jargon).  They were to perform on bars, beam, floor and vault.

We sat, we watched, hearts filled with pride when we caught a glimpse of the swinging blonde ponytail that was ours. Mike played a little sudoku on his Blackberry (who knew the Blackberry had games?) in quiet moments.  I took Issy to the toilet twice, Josh once.  The spectators were all crammed into two rows of fold up chairs at the side of the gym.  As I ran this gauntlet three times, I noticed every adult had a very big SLR style camera with a massive lens, and every sibling had an iphone, ipod or ipad to play with.

Except us.  We had the devices for the kids, but the only camera we had was my iphone.  Pathetic.  Hence we have not record of Sarah's first gym comp.

Mike decided it was a good time to hear the story of why we were here in the first place and kept asking questions about how Sarah even got into this level of gymnastics in the first place.  It is a bit of a long story, and I'm sure I'd told him before but anyways...

Then, just when he started grilling me about how I arranged the complex car pool we have set up to get the kids to and from gym twice a week the lady in front of us told us to be quiet, because her daughter was doing her floor routine.

This charming personage proceeded to talk through every other child's performance, and her son was so busy watching Josh playing his ipod he was almost sitting in his lap.  But according to the mantra of this blog, I remained in a state of great casualness and kept my mouth closed.

Every now and again an official would come and shout at us because someone was using their camera flash. (Strictly forbidden because it puts the kids off their balance.)  The guy next to me was packing a lens roughly the size of a small nation, and seemed to know his way around a camera, but just couldn't managed to turn off the flash until he'd been pointedly yelled at three times.

Blog name, comes in handy twice in 10 minutes.

Sarah wobbled her way gamely through her routines.  I thought she looked beautiful.  And when she did the extended hand presenty thing at the beginning and end of each routine, she looked sensational.

 Sarah looked a bit like this, but way better.  

She came 9th in one of the apparatus.  We can't remember which one for sure, but we think it was vault.  She received a certificate and is as happy as if she had won the whole thing.  And therefore, so are we.

Except.

There's a part of my brain that keeps saying, if only she hadn't had that ankle injury, or she'll be better once her ankle gets stronger, or, she's got a bad cold she's not on top of her game, and then, I slap myself mentally around the head, because that would mean I'm becoming a psycho gym Mummy.

The last thing I want to be.  It's so hard not to be a little bit psycho where your kids are concerned.