Some Sweet Soccer Mom Action.

When I signed the kids up for their first round of "real" soccer, I did not expect that it could be upwards of six hours a week between practices and games, but here we are. I am now someone with a folding chair in my car so I can sit on various sidelines. The pluses are that the kids have their practices and games at the same field every time, so me and my lousy sense of direction only have to make it to two locations a week, and each soccer field is next to a park, so one kid can play while their sibling practices. Game days, Tim and I divide and conquer, and Mimi and Poppy have been trying to make it to both games.

The other, biggest plus, is that the kids are having a blast. Adam loves that his "best fwiend" Nico is on his team, and while he spends a lot of his practice time just ding-donging around the field, he's got some decent focus on game day. In his age group they break each team in half and they play on a half field, so that it's not all eight kids trying to kick each other in the shins at once. Ellie's team has slightly more skill and focus, though on Fridays she comes to practice from gymnastics, so some of her focus is broken by her desire to do front and back walkovers on the field, and she's distracted by the sheer exhaustion of it all (this Friday night she went to bed crying, and then we heard her crying at 7am because of an aquabead emergency - we had hoped she'd sleep at least an hour longer!) They have good, encouraging coaches and they're having a blast, even sweating to death.

Hopefully their beautiful, smiling faces give you the full picture of how nice and sunny and warm it is out on the pitch, yikes!