Eli loves his sport (well, not as much as Minecraft, but that's another story and one that I no doubt share with lots of parents of boys aged between 6-12)..but I digress...over the past month or so Eli has been busy with lots of sporting activities - he's been doing swim classes on Mondays, soccer on Tuesdays and Fridays, tennis on Fridays at school and Auskick (Australian Rules Football) after school on Thursdays...in addition, he's been training (at school) for a couple of running races, a sprint of 70 metres and a cross country race of 300 metres. Needless to say, he's both fit and, at the end of each week, somewhat exhausted (as am I).
This blog post is a chronicle of his recent successes in sport, starting with his 70 m sprint at school. Last year he won his race and this year his chances were probably improved a little given that he was racing against kids born in 2007 and not some from his grade that were born in 2006 (I won't bore you with the details of the annoying system which divides year groups!). Of course, now that he's in Grade 1 he has more competition - many of the kids last year were not really racing, as evidenced by the fact that they were unable to stay in their lanes and were just having a bit of a laugh. Nevertheless, Eli was primed for his race and for the challenge of winning (not that winning is everything of course). I wasn't there to see his race, but apparently he burst out in front from the start and maintained his lead all the way, winning by about a foot or so. He was very happy, as you can see from this photo of him with his first placed ribbon.
Eli has also really been enjoying his soccer this year - he's in a team with a few of his classmates from school which is great - and he's also been in pretty hot form. The key for him is his drive - he wants to win the ball - and his fitness - he runs, and runs, and runs. Lots of his team mates don't - they watch and watch and watch, which infuriates Eli (and me), but also drives him to run even more. By the end of the game on each Friday night Eli has typically saved a few goals, scored a few goals and used up the last of his energy for the week. Here are some photos of him in his Tarragindi Tigers gear, prior to the team photo being taken.
Back on dry land again Eli recently raced in the cross country race at school. For this event they didn't split the year groups, so Eli was in with all of the Grade 1's (some of which are already seven years old). Eli was feeling pretty confident, despite the fact that he (and I) are more built for sprints than longer distance events. He'd been reporting on his progress in Physical Education classes at school, where he had been consistently been coming in the top three runners (but this is just within his class, not the whole grade). Fortunately I was on hand to see him line up...in this photo he's the smallest runner in yellow...
And they're off!
Eli made a nice quick start, you can see him in full stride making his way towards the front of the pack down the first straight...
And he was flying by the time he got closer to me and the first corner on the circuit...
The circuit took the kids around the oval and then up a quite steep hill before coming back onto the oval for the finish...here's Eli, crossing the line in fourth place! A great effort! I was very excited and proud of him!
They had the first six finishers line up in order, so that their names could be recorded and points could be awarded to their house teams - red for Holland, blue for Toohey and yellow for Gibson! As you can see from this photo, Eli was amongst the smallest of the winners, but he makes up for small legs with his incredible speed and drive.
I wasn't the only one that was proud - Eli was thrilled with his performance too.
Just a quick finishing note on Eli's swimming. It is fair to say that we've
missed a few weeks through winter, for a variety of reasons, but he's
been doing really well (aside from coughing a lot from the high chlorine
levels in the indoor pool!) when we've turned up. In fact he's just
gone up to the next level, which is great, because he does tend to get a
bit bored when he's not challenged enough.
What a sports star!
A few weeks back I spotted a new tooth in Eli's mouth! Yes, there it was, a big adult tooth coming up through the gum behind his baby teeth at the bottom front. I was a bit taken aback initially, but after asking a few Mum's I discovered that this was a reasonably common phenomenon. In fact I learnt that this is sometimes referred to as a shark tooth, since shark's have rows of teeth. Eli quite liked the sound of that, but he was more excited at the prospect of losing his first baby tooth, especially since many of his friends at school have lost 6 or 7 of them already. I have tried to convince Eli that not having lost his yet was a good thing, but now that the shark tooth had appeared I guess it was time. Not that the baby teeth at the front were budging much at first - they were quite happy staying put. But fast forward about 10 days and there was movement aplenty. One of Eli's baby teeth was on the way out and it was finally being pushed from below as you can see from this photo on the right.
And that was the beginning of the end for this tooth, as Eli took to the
task of encouraging it out by wiggling it at every opportunity. It
eventually relented and came out and as you can see from this slightly
less toothy grin of Eli's, he was pretty happy with himself.
