Will's First Auburn Game

We have taken Will to Auburn several times, and he has attended A-Day and the National Championship Celebration in the stadium, but he has never attended a regular game. We took him to the first home game this year vs. Louisiana-Monroe. I guess it has taken me so long to blog about it because it took me about a week to recover from this experience :) I told Will on the way home, we would try again when he was 7...

As our luck would have it, he was up ALL night the night before the game. He was coughing, running low grade fever, miserable! We were up basically once an hour with him and had we not already bought tickets and planned on going with our neighbors, we would have probably ditched the whole trip altogether. He finally got good and asleep at 5am, but we had to drag him out of his bed at 6am to leave (Kick off was at 11:30, and John wanted to be sure we made it to Tiger Walk). We just put Will in the car in his pjs, swung by Chick-fil-A drive thru for breakfast and we were on our way. He was so excited about going to a game and had been talking about it all week, so he perked right up once we were on the road. He didn't eat much, but he wasn't running fever anymore, so I was just praying he would be okay and we would have a fun day.

In Alex City he started saying "My poopy, my poopy" which is what he always says when he needs to poop. Keep in mind that he has been pee pee trained since January, but only just started pooping on the potty at the end of July. He has yet to poop anywhere but home. We knew this was not good. Basically at this point we felt like the stars were all aligned against us-first he was not feeling 100%, now he needed to poop and we are no where near home. I knew he would never go in a gas station. He is just so hard headed when it comes to the potty. I looked and John and just told him to go buy some pull ups. I can't believe we did that, but we basically had 2 choices-force him to only poop in a potty, which he would not do, so he would be whining and miserable the whole day, or we could just break down and spend $14 on pull ups that we would use 1 out of the pack, be done with it, and get on about our day. We bought the pull ups in Dadeville and then pulled off right when we turned on College Street in Auburn at a gas station and let him just stand up in the backseat with a pull up on and poop.

He seemed to perk back up after he pooped. We parked and headed toward Tiger Walk. We met up with the McClearys at Tiger Walk. At this point, Will was exhausted, whiny, and wanting to be held at all times. I thought we were just going to leave and head back home before the game even started. See we thought we were being smart in telling Will what to expect about the day, so all week we told him about Tiger Walk, the eagle flying, the players running out.....so of course in three year old land, he expected all of these things to happen simultaneously as soon as we got out of the car in Auburn. He definitely didn't understand why we had to wait on anything. Finally Tiger Walk started and like father, like son, Will loved it. He had this super intense face as each player walked by. He kept his hand out and high fived everyone. His favorite was Aubie!!

On the way to the stadium, we stopped for a photo opp in the same place that John first introduced Will to the stadium at 2 weeks old. What a difference 3.5 years makes!!

Once inside the stadium, Will loved it. He loved taking in all the sights and sounds. He was amazed by the crowd in the stadium and all that was going on.

However we were in the game at least an hour before kick off. You can only expect a 3 year old to sit in the stands for so long. He almost missed the eagle flying because he was completely melting down and just as John was about to take him out, it flew right over our head!

That excitement only lasted a minute and I ended up taking him out and we basically spent most of the first half sitting on the concrete in front of the concessions. He was tired and hot. He wouldn't eat or drink anything which I know made it worse!! He fell asleep on me for about 45 minutes or so and woke up just in time to see Auburn score right before half time. The nap definitely did him good. He started cheering and was more tolerable. We spent the 2nd half in and out of the stands. I thought I was going to scream when it went into overtime. Will was doing much better by this point but it was TIME.TO.GO.!!!

After the game, we took a few pics at the Heisman statues and headed to the car. We stopped for dinner before getting back on the road and we were SURE Will would sleep all the way home. Nope!! I seriously thought we were going to go nuts. He talked the whole time and he was so tired that he wasn't speaking in coherent sentences. On 280 at the Colonnade exit which is the one we get off at to go to our house, he fell asleep. GO FIGURE.

Despite the drama, the pictures look like we had the perfect day :) And we did have fun-but it was just a roller coaster-happy sometimes/miserable sometimes. We definitely had envisioned it differently, but I have found like most things in life with kids are that way. You build it up and create this experience in your head, and it never quite measures up. That isn't a bad thing-just different than what you pictured. Will's first game was definitely different than what we thought it would be, but we loved sharing the game day experience with our precious little boy.