Catching Up

I'm catching my first cold of the school year. I've seen it coming for a few days now. Nothing like a student wiping their nose with their hands and then asking if you will hold their hand on the way to bus dismissal. Those sweet, germy kids of mine.

Still, it didn't stop us from having a jam-packed weekend. Friday night was our school movie night, followed Saturday morning by an 8:30 soccer game. Violet got to play goalie for a while and she said it was her favorite part of the game. We ran errands that afternoon, hit up the grocery store for the week, I graded papers, did laundry, all so we could watch the Bulldogs play their butts off that evening over with some friends. I was volunteering in Annie's Sunday school class this morning, then we had the afternoon to get things put in order before another work week starts. All with this lovely head cold brewing. Such is life. It never stops. And while I didn't take many pictures of this weekend, here are a few that continue to tell the story of our lives.

Green Lightning takes the field!

The jury is still out on whether soccer will be in Violet's future. I'm definitely seeing improvement after every practice and game. After the first game she complained that she wanted a new position, the "running and kicking" position. (She's been on offense and well, our team hasn't had much opportunity for offense this season.) But she seemed to like goalie this past Saturday, so hopefully the coach will continue to let her explore some different positions. I don't think she will ever be super aggressive on the field, but I'm proud of her for getting out there, following directions and generally trying her best.

Truth: this picture looks so sweet, doesn't it. Don't worry. 4.7 seconds after I took it, they were both in tears. Violet decided to pull rank and not let Annie stay in the play tent, Annie pitched a fit for not being allowed to do every exact thing she sees her big sister do. Just thought you all should know the truth behind this blissful moment.

When Violet grows up, she wants to be a teacher. Don't worry, I've got time to talk her out of it.

If looks could kill...

Annie has developed quite the pouty face. She whips it out at the blink of an eye if you cross her. In this particular case, she had just dumped out an entire water bottle in her lap on purpose. So I did what any normal mom would do -  I took the water bottle away. I was rewarded by this death glare. This little stinker also got out of bed eight times last night. At one point I found her laying down at the top of the stairs; I think she was trying to hide from me but still see what was going on downstairs without her! Her new trick is to get out of bed in the middle of the night and go into Violet's room. Generally Violet is completely dead to the world asleep (thank goodness!) and Matt or I have to go fetch Annie and walk her back to her bed. She's a mess! Also, she will be two on Wednesday! Crazy!

Last Soccer Game

Violet played her last soccer game of the season today. I had my doubts about the season this year. For one thing, it felt like every other game or practice was rained out! So to make up for it, Thursday practices turned into games, which ended up being a good thing, at least for our girl. She seemed to have much more energy and motivation on Thursdays (perhaps it was the drive-thru McD's we always had on the way to the fields).

Regardless, Violet has shown such improvement this season, and really seemed to enjoy herself, that I think we'll be signing up for soccer again next year... on big fields... playing positions... keeping score... We'll see how it goes! As long as there are cupcakes and a trophy at the end, I think she'll be happy to give it a shot.

Be there first!

Soccer + hairbow = winning.

Can't catch me!

Going for the goal!

Blue Thunder teammates! We play soccer in style!

Blue Thunder!

Blue Thunder team photo!

We had our second soccer game today and Blue Thunder rocked it! I mean, no one was keeping score or anything. But considering we had to drag Violet out of the car and onto the field, she played exceptionally well once she was out there. I'm happy to report that Violet only touched the ball with her hands once and kept the skipping around the field to a minimum. She even scored three goals! Two of them were for our team! (Ha!)

Practice time.

Despite the freeeeezing weather (hello "feels like 35 degrees") Violet played hard, ran hard, listened well, and even had a chance to defend the goal. She's not a bad little defense player, I gotta say. The jury is still out on whether she'll be ready for position play next season, but I can already see how much she's grown from last season. So much with Violet has to do with how comfortable she feels. New experiences, not good. But once she's had the chance to observe, absorb, get the hang of things, she's generally good to go.

She shoots... she scores!

As for my first round of being a Team Mom, I have to say I'm pretty terrible at it. I haven't managed to collect all the money for our uniforms, I haven't sent any reminders about who is bringing snack... Although I prefer to keep things low-key - I do give a little "hey, don't forget..." reminder at each practice. And at least I have a list of who still owes me. I did pick the team name, though, so I guess there's always that! Consider it my contribution to the team.

Learning the word of the week, "perseverance". Trying your best even when you don't want to.

Soccer, Take Two

Back on the ball.

It's soccer season again! And wow, what a different having some experience makes. When we first started soccer, Violet was nervous to go onto the field by herself. Often Matt or I would have to join her in the practice to get her to participate. This time, even though it's a new team and new coach, she ran right out there. Of course, it helps that half the team is made up of kids from her class (yeah, we really worked the system on that one!) But even so, I think her comfort level is definitely helping.


I was relieved to see Violet has such a great first practice, because things were a little dicey when teams were announced. When we signed up for our second season, I listed the names of some of her friends she wanted to be with, and also the name of last season's coach, whom we loved and had a great experience with. So I was thrilled when she called to say we were on her team again. But I quickly grew concerned when none of the parents from school had gotten a similar call. And then I grew extra nervous when I realized it was because Coach Angie was now coaching a U7 team.

Age-wise, U7 is appropriate for my five-year-old. But skill-wise? Maturity-wise? I wasn't so sure. U7 has positions. Goalies. They keep score. My child... well, have I mentioned that Violet's favorite part of soccer is snack time? In fact, the only question she asked when I had her decide if she wanted to play again was, "Will there be a party with cupcakes at the end?" So yeah, we've got different priorities.

Violet is one of the oldest in her class, so when all the requests for Coach Angie came in, we made the cut and everyone else stayed in U5 (no score-keeping, more "run around and have fun" attitude). I immediately started expressing my reservations to Angie, who to her credit did a great job calming my fears and promising the best snacks at halftime, just for Violet. Have I mentioned how much I like Coach Angie? I agonized over it. Should we try to switch? Should we stick it out? Would a hard season ruin the sport for Violet forever? Could it all be okay like Angie said? We decided to go for it. I talked to Violet and explained why her friends weren't going to be on her team, we picked out snacks, bought new soccer gear, got ready to go.

Huddling up with Coach Jeremy.

Then out of the blue, I got a call from a "Coach Jeremy". I didn't know any Coach Jeremy, but he'd gotten our name from one of Violet's classmates. He was going to be coaching all her friends on the U5 team and as fate would have it, he had one extra slot open on his team. He'd heard we might be interested in switching to U5 and he was prepared to write her name in on the spot. Did I want in?

Talk about being put on the spot. But it felt God-given. I hadn't asked the other mom to pass along our name and number. I hadn't run to the league demanding to be switched back to U5. It really felt dropped in our laps. So I took it. I felt awful when I emailed Coach Angie to tell her. But Coach Jeremy seems great, Violet was so excited to see her four friends from school, and somehow I got roped into being Team Mom despite my best feet-dragging. Hopefully it all adds up to the start of a really great season!

Last Soccer Game

Violet and JT, soccer buddies!

Of course, we waited for the last game to play the hardest team.

Coach Angie and a trophy!

She did it! A whole season of soccer! And we did it! 8 weeks of leaving work early, remembering to pack soccer gear and snacks, hauling everyone to the field on Saturday morning, enduring scorching sun and freezing winds... (hey, I didn't get a trophy so this is all the recognition I'm going to get!)

We are so grateful to have gotten such a fabulous coach. Angie is a first grade teacher and she has taught kids' sports before, and it was abundantly obvious at every practice and game. I'm crossing my fingers that she decides to coach another season soon!

Violet was so excited to get a trophy (although possibly even more excited to get a cupcake!) She brought it around to show all the neighbors once we got home. The church league we were in (shout out to Creekside Methodist) was the perfect starting point for us - relaxed play, no score-keeping, a little positive devotional for everyone at half-time... Every week there was a word of the day and at practice Coach Angie would tell a little story to illustrate it. I don't remember the story that went with "initiative," but one afternoon in the car Violet got herself all buckled in before I had to ask her and when I thanked her, she said she was showing initiative. Yeah baby!

Hopefully Violet will want to play soccer again! For now, I think we're taking a break from extracurricular activities.

Only One More Practice

We sure do have fun at soccer practice, especially now that the weather is so nice. I can't believe our season is almost done!

Gooooooal!

Violet refused to have her picture taken at soccer, so this is as official as it will get this season.

At least she got into the Pink Falcon team picture, although I can't say she was too happy about it.

Regardless of the fact that Violet wasn't too thrilled about having her first season of soccer professionally documented (hey, it saves me the 35 bucks they wanted for the picture package), this girl just keeps getting better and better!

Remember the little girl who had her fingers in her mouth the whole first game, too shy to barely get onto the field? Well, she's gone. The little girl that replaced her aggressively chases after the ball, gets into the middle of the pack to kick it down the field, runs in front of the play play defense and turn the ball around... why, she's even replaced skipping around the field with full-on running (80 percent of the time, at least!)

And this weekend, the grandparents were on hand to see Violet score her first goal! The kids seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. When I asked her what her favorite part of the game was, she said "running". I had to remind her about the goal! Things have progressed well enough that I would be pretty confident signing her up for another season. Although she said she would only do it if her friends and coach were on the team again, so she may be in it more for the company at this point. We will see.

First Soccer Game

Kicking the ball was more fun before people started telling her what to do.

We had our first soccer practice two weeks ago. We missed the next practice and first game while we were in Boston, so this past Friday Violet headed back onto the field for her second every soccer practice.

I wasn't holding my breath. Even though she has two friends from school on the team, the first practice wasn't what I would call a smashing success. It was a million degrees outside on a Friday evening. Towards the end Violet got tripped up and walked off the field in tears. I was distracted with keeping Annie in the shade and didn't see much of what was going on. It was just... meh. I had hoped that soccer would maybe be the thing that Violet took a shine to - we've tried ballet, gymnastics, but nothing has really stuck. Well, it didn't look good for soccer either.

But practice went well! Our coach is awesome, a first grade teacher, no less! So she's great with young kids. There were only three kids there for the first 15 minutes or so, and that helped Violet get comfortable again. I had to get out there and encourage her quite a bit, but hey, no tears, so I called it a success.

"Huggies" with her school buddies Taylor and JT.

Annie wanted in on the action.

Then it was game time. Our team is the Pink Falcons (hey, the boys picked it!) and our smart coach brought pink balloons to put on the goal we were aiming into. Genius idea.But look at my shy little friend. At first she flat-out refused to go onto the field, even for warm-ups. Then she went, but insisted on keeping her fingers in her mouth (her tell-tale "I'm nervous" look). Eventually she went in, and Coach Angie held her hand on the field.

Slo-o-o-w-ly she started warming up to the idea of a game. I think so many kids on the field was intimidating. It's one thing to kick the ball around with Daddy in the backyard, it's another to fight a pack of feet and legs over the ball. But she hung in there. By the end Violet was actually running independently around the field, moving in the right direction, and I think she might have even incidentally kicked the ball. There were no tears, and she claimed she had fun.

Coach Angie even gave her the balloons from the goal at the end of the game for being the "most improved" player. So there you go. The second practice was better than the first, I'm hoping the second game is better than the first, and things just keep improving from here. Sweet girl. I remember what it was like to be shy and nervous in new situations. Hopefully she'll build up her confidence and learn to love it. The other parents at the game were so sweet. One told me how she signed her daughter up to play, and it took until the last game before she ever touched the ball. But it's all about trying, you know? And it was too cute watching the kiddos running up and down the field, scoring in the wrong goals, trying so hard not to use their hands. Looks like I'm a soccer mom, for the next few weeks at least!

JT and Violet