Footy practice

It's a miracle of sorts that I'm posting again so soon! I'll tell you one of the main excuses I had for not posting regularly.  I was using Ryan's old laptop and letters 'P' and 'O' on the keyboard had been broken off by one of our lovely wee ones.  I couldn't hack cutting and pasting those letters in anymore!  It was a bloomin' nightmare.  For Ryan's birthday we got him a Nexus tablet...which I kind of use more than him, but typing on that wasn't ideal either.  So, Ryan got me an ace wireless keyboard to use with the tablet; yippie! Problem solved.  The twins are taking their wee morning nap and Peter is playing with his superheros while I get a short blog in and wait by the window for Jack's bus to arrive.

Something I forgot to post about yesterday was Jack's football practice (aka soccer).  When he turned 3 we put him in a district program called 'Little Big Kicks'.  When we showed up to the weekly Saturday practice we found out that it was in fact just a bunch of teenage girls playing red light green light with the kids, etc.  Maybe I should have expected that, but still I thought they might have had an actual coach.  None of that really mattered anyway because Jack was terrified/overwhelmed and refused to play for the first 5 weeks of the 8 week program.  Then the last 3 weeks he had the time of his life!  We waited a year before deciding to try football again and so, he started in a "real" team at the beginning of this month.  There is an actual coach this time; Coach Murray, and about 6 boys on the team.  We started with closer to ten boys, but the numbers have dwindled as school started and some boys clearly hated being there.

Jack is thoroughly enjoying himself.  He is silly and laughs when he gets a good kick at the ball, and even when he's first out over and over again when they play a "musical chairs" type game but with targets to run to, he is always laughing and having a blast.  I have, much to my own astonishment, become a total side-line coach.  Oh dear! Sometimes I have to really stop myself from getting too into it...I'm the most embarrassing at their Saturday matches.  I feel like the coach hardly says a word to them when they're on the field, but he is really good at encouraging them when they take turns coming off during the match and at the end.  They don't keep official scores, but at our first Saturday match Jack was playing against his good friend, Joey's team and he was so devastated that they hadn't scored a single goal and the other team had about 20ish, that he came running to me crying.  It was hard for him to be losing so badly even though he's generally a good sport.  After a brief pep talk he was back in it and even though they never did score in that particular game he was ok with it in the end and congratulated Joey.  Since then they have done better at the matches, but I really hope he just continues to enjoy the sport (plus, I'm kinda liking it too.)

The only negative that comes from having signed Jack up for football, seems to be hanging out at his practices for an hour with the other 3 wee ones. Peter attempts to whack trees with enormous sticks. Penelope is constantly wandering away, and Olive nearly chocked herself to death at Tuesdays practice....she's really into tasting the bark and leaves that scatter the field.  And she thinks it's brill fun to run directly into any area the boys might be tackling in.  So I try and hold her for as long as my arms can manage before the body flailing and screaming just becomes too much or I'm utterly embarrassed.  It's always a real treat.