My William.
I see so much of myself in him, it’s crazy.
He’s my little other half. My best little friend. He’s the kid in our family, that after we go grocery shopping and we’re bringing the bags in, will look at me and say, “Oh, no… Mom! You don’t lift, go inside and relax.” Honestly, I look around to see if Matt’s taping him as a joke sometimes, just to see what I’ll say. But in (all) actuality, he’s THAT sweet of a kid.
William developed a love for swimming at a very young age. Personally, I loved it. I was a competitive swimmer when I was a teenager and swimming was my life. I loved the water. I loved competing. I loved everything about it. So this love of swimming from William, I was ALL for it. When William was 4 years old he wanted to join the summer swim team at our pool club. I told him he could ONLY if he could swim one lap of the pool without stopping. I knew he couldn’t do it yet, and truthfully, I felt 4 was way too young to be on the swim team. I didn’t want to push him. Well… silly me, I should have known my William. He (LITERALLY) spent ALL summer practicing swimming one lap of the pool. Towards mid-August, he could do it.
Fast forward 5 years. My William. The kid still love swimming. It’s funny now, as he’s gotten older… he’s not a fan of practice, but he LOVES competing. I keep telling him that practicing is the necessary ingredient to being able to compete. You need to get your body and mind prepped.
His hero is Michael Phelps.
He loves to read about him and I pull YouTube videos of him swimming for William to watch.
Last week after practice, his coach told his practice session that they would be watching a video on Michael Phelps the last 30 minutes of practice. All the kids were excited to get out of the pool and watch a video, it was cute to see them all. As William went to sit down and grab a spot, he came over to me and asked if he could have his iPad. I was hoping he wasn’t going to start playing Minecraft during the video, so I hesitated… but he promised me he wouldn’t play any games.
Matt and I were sitting behind all the kids with Alex, Ben, Henry and Victoria. We were chatting and just deciding what to do for dinner, etc… and then we both caught a glimpse of William.
He was taping the video on his iPad.
Honestly, I wanted to cry. I thought it was the cutest thing ever.
I was proud of him. Here was my little swimming-loving kid taping the video, all so he could remember later what Michael Phelps had said. I was just about to tell my husband, “We should just order this video for him,” when my husband said to me, “I just found the video on Amazon and ordered it from my phone.”
It’s a beautiful thing when you see your child love something so much. I’ve always told him, the second there’s no love and it’s just a “thing” to do, he can stop. But I really, really hope his love for swimming continues.
