beating myself up

Some days I feel like a complete idiot. This morning is one of those times. I have no idea how I completely skipped an important detail, but I have the sense of letting my son down. He does not know I am at fault, though he might figure it out later. That remains to be seen. I just feel black and blue inside right now.

Little B is in soccer for the first time. He has never played sports before and seems to be enjoying himself in spite of the fact that he is one of two kids on the team who is new to this. All the other five year old prodigies have a clue what they are doing, and my poor son is working hard to figure it out--which also means battling the fact he is easily distracted by the running around and mass of confusion. Myself? I have begun to hate the way the schedule dictates my life. I already have his therapy one day a week, and this just adds two more structured times into my week that I have to find ways to entertain my one year old (the stroller makes her mad for that long and she wants to get ON the playing field with the boys, not watch from the sidelines...there is no place empty for her to run around in typically).

Today is picture day. I got notices and directions and the schedule I printed out said "start time, 8:20"; no end time was listed, which seemed odd. Please remember, we have not done this before. I assumed that meant you could get there as early as 8:20 or some other time throughout the day. Wrong. (There were directions on this same schedule, and we had it all printed out and easy to access with the soccer bag.)

I also received a specific email with a load of further information yesterday or the day before. I opened it but something must have distracted me. I recall reading the END of the email about concessions, but in no way had I read the beginning about pictures. This morning at some point, my husband asked me if they had a time for team pictures. Huh? Well, I had no idea. Duh. First time soccer mom who missed the important email. I told him I guessed not since I hadn't heard anything about it and relayed what I thought I knew. No big deal.

At 8:26, my cell phone rang from inside the diaper bag on a kitchen chair. I had just come from the bedroom or I'd never have heard it. It was the coach wondering if they should wait for us for the pictures or go ahead without Little B. At that moment, my husband was upstairs in the office, dialed in for work and Little B was up there visiting him. Both wearing pj's still. I had no answer for the coach, except to say I didn't realize. . . and we'd leave in just a moment. Little B has never gotten ready so fast in his entire life. Seriously. I heard him praying for help with hurrying and he was in that soccer uniform so fast my head spun (he had a little mommy help, but he worked hard to keep up).

In those few minutes, the coach called again to ask how long it would be, the photography place was pressing them to hurry up, and I still had no answer except that they were getting in the car. The last call came a couple minutes ago--they'd had to go ahead with the team picture, but Little B could still get his individual one taken.

When I called my husband to tell him, he was already parked. He missed it by minutes and a part of me wants to cry. I completely failed my son in this. I don't want him to be crushed. I am already crushed enough for both of us. On one hand, it would have been a picture of kids I didn't remember in the years to come, on the other hand, it is a team he is working with. I do get it. I just dropped the ball. I already feel a bit of a misfit at the practices and games, now I don't even want to show my face. Isn't there a hole with my name on it that I could crawl into until the season is over?