~Bronze~

I'm moving away from 'Autumn' for a few posts in order to do a little 'proud mama sharing' of what my Oldest has been up to. He turns twelve this Sunday, and my head is all wrapped up in that along with frantically finishing his promised birthday gift- his own room. 

After two weeks of being sick I am way behind on finishing the painting of his room (our old guestroom) - to be specific his windows and all their moving parts. Love the old windows; hate painting them. They must get done by Saturday so there is time to shampoo the 1983 carpet. But I digress-

What I really want to brag about share is the Oldest's fencing tournament last Saturday. It was his first 'open foil' after moving up from 'novice foil'. He was really nervous and just hoping he wouldn't come in dead last.

I watched each fight as calmly as I could. There is something gut-wrenching about watching your offspring in any kind of performance. It's almost like being up there yourself and I have to try so hard to pass it off as 'just a tournament; no big deal' when I know how badly my kid wants to do well.

Of course, as I'm watching, I also have no idea what the heck is going on. 

" Hault! Attack. Counter Attack. Reverse Perry. Touch left, point right. Engard!"

I tried so hard to understand what was happening in each bout- and believe me, with four hours of fencing, I had plenty of time to figure it out. But all my attentiveness turned out to be an 'epic fail' as my kids would put it. After endless bouts of fencing, I figured my son had lost most of his matches and I was praying and psyching myself up to give him just the right motherly words of wisdom and encouragement I figured he would need at the end. In fact, I got really worried as he came up to me at the end with an excited look on his face as he told me he thought he was going to get a good place. "Uh, Oh!" I'm thinking- this one is going to be a bad blow!

Instead, as the ending places were called, I was startled to hear he was not after all in twelfth place. Or eleventh, or tenth.

No- he ended up in third; with a bronze medal. 

Oh!

See the midget above? That's my midget and he came in third!

 Evidently all the matches I thought he lost, he had really won. I learned something last Saturday- that my kid knows if he's won or not. (DUH!) Obviously fencing is completely lost on me. But I couldn't be prouder to be wrong!

Cheers!