Jack started soccer

Yesterday Jack entered into the world of team sports. He is playing 3 v 3 soccer with no goalies. He and Pete have been practicing for a couple weeks now. Of course, when we arrive at the field a sense of fear overwhelms Jack, he no longer wants to play soccer anymore and believes that everyone will think that he is stupid. After some prodding we get Jack to walk over to his team. Once the game begins and he is able to kick the ball all fear leaves and he even scores the first goal of the game--his first goal ever! After this it all becomes about how fun it is to run after the ball, kick it, and even 'explode' other people. He didn't realize that people ran into each other or even fell down sometimes and he thought that was awesome.

When I arrived to the informational meeting for Jack's soccer team I was asked to be team manager and said sure. So last week I was helping to sort, label, fold, and pack up t-shirts for the whole league, sending out an email to assign snack duties to the other families on the team, and working the concession stand. In the concession stand I was in charge of making pretzels, nachos, and popcorn-making popcorn causes slight finger burns just so you know. Pete says I am turning into one of those moms that gets super involved in everything. I believe he might be right though that is not what I intended. For Jack's school we have signed up to help in the library, bring in snacks for the teachers, help with classroom parties, and the book fair.

Luke became very interested in puzzles. We have a 12 piece Melissa and Doug puzzle that he sits in front of for over an hour every day. He breaks up the pieces, flips them over, then reassembles the puzzle all by himself. Last week he would have me sit with him and help him out but this week he doesn't want me anywhere near him as he turns the pieces in various directions to get them all to fit correctly. Occasionally he will ask where one goes but mostly he just wants to show me the finished product. I am impressed with his focus and the repetitiveness of this task. He will just sit and do this one puzzle over and over and over again for at least an hour without stopping.

Thomas loves toilets. He loves to splash, slam the lid, and apparently throw things in the toilet. Thomas loves the toilet so much that I have tried to impress on Jack the importance of closing the lid after finishes but he doesn't always remember. On Saturday Jack did not remember and I heard Thomas making his way in that direction, so I asked Jack to go back and put the seat down, but instead Jack said, " Mom, I can't. Thomas put my pajamas in there!" I think we may have another mischief maker.

I bought a couple new sippy cups for Thomas, some without handles, and now he refuses to drink anything. For a few days I was really at a loss as to what to do because he really didn't want to drink out of these new cups. Well, we figured out that Thomas wants to bypass the no handle sippy cups for just the real thing. Once we handed him a regular cup and a bottle of water he drank like a pro.