on falling down...

the girlies two had lacrosse all weekend. i am utterly exhausted from watching them run up and down the fields with their gorgeous young legs and swinging hair and also from keeping my stomach muscles clenched for every single minute of every single game. 

it's hard to let your babies play hard.

grae's finger may be busted but is probably just jammed and cut from a slashing stick. she doesn't mind at all because it makes her look thug-lite and plus she scored a goal. poor lill was laid out so darn hard in her sunday game that her coach came on the field. i've never seen a crash like that, so much so that i can't think of another word for it. {her coach called it an assault, but that seems a leetle sinister. even though i wanted to press charges.}

anyway. we took them out to dinner to celebrate that they were both still alive, and the waiter asked if they'd just had a game. they smiled and said yes, and he asked if they'd won.

grae answered yes quickly, then thought about it for a second and changed it to no. when he walked away, she laughed and said something like but i kind of won. she got a cool injury and a goal. she did win.

i don't even look at the score. i look at how they get back up after being down. i honestly thought they'd have to carry lillie off the field and that i would have to kill someone, but she sprang right up and got right back into it. 

i look at how grae started yelling straight-away from the sidelines at the refs in her inside voice that they should yellow-card the girl who plowed down her lillie. you should know that grae's inside voice is the bad one that she only uses inside our house. it's so disdainful, you'd cringe. but she was fighting for someone she loves even more than she realizes, so pat and i let it go.

sometimes all the time i feel like i brag about these girls of mine. i know i do. i just look at these small versions of the someday women they'll become, and i see shades of...i don't know what. but it's beautiful. and thrilling. and disappointing. and worrisome. and exhausting. but mostly thrilling and beautiful. 

babies, man. they'll break your heart seventy times harder than you ever thought you could survive, but then you'll see them get back up and fight and you take this breath and maybe your chin does that i'm going to cry tremble and it's all back together again. 

i live for those moments when it's all back together again.

everything pretty found on you only live this life once.