First day of Soccer!

Shmoo started soccer today! It was his first experience with organized sports. Ok, I shouldn’t call it “organized sports” because 3 and 4 year olds playing soccer is about as organized as Walmart on Black Friday:

“Come stand over here. Stand on this line. Come stand on this line. Keep your hands to yourself. No kicking. I said stand in this line. Now come over here. Who’s crying? I want a snack. I want a drink. Kick the ball, not the boy. Where are the bathrooms? I don’t like this shirt. This is the ball that you get. Where is your sister? Don’t eat the grass. What are we doing? Don’t touch that. Come over here! Run! Don’t run! You’re supposed to be having fun. There’s no crying in soccer!

No really, it was like that, and worse. Maybe it was more like trying to herd kittens through Walmart on Black Friday.

I appreciate that the league is all about fun, especially at this age. All the preschool teams show up at the fields at 9am on Sat morning. A group of (really cute British) trainers teaches all the kids some “skills” that they go work on with their “coaches” on their assigned fields. After they run drills (and pick flowers, and chase girls, and try to run away to the snack bar, and throw fits, and have a snack, and sit on their parents’ laps, and complain, and run around like maniacs) all the teams are paired up to play a “game”. Oh, and you KNOW what a group of preschool kids playing soccer looks like:

(All kids must be within two feet of the ball at all times, lol!)

Hmm. Rules? Don’t pick up the ball. Don’t push anyone. Try to kick the ball somewhere, anywhere. Oh, and you must wear shin-guards. I saw the cutest teeny tiniest shin guards EVER on this barely 3 year old on Shmoo’s team. Seriously, the sheer trial sized-ness of them made want to pinch someone’s cheeks.

I would have liked to pinch the adorable cheeks of many of the kids on Shmoo’s team. Many of the kids simply opted to sit on their parent’s laps. One kid was so opposed to playing that he stood on the sidelines, arms folded in a fierce bunch, and glared at anyone who looked in his direction. For good measure, every few minutes the teeny guy yelled, “I SAID I’M NOT PLAYING!” even when no one was near him. Another little girl busted out crying every time they were supposed to run because, “I might fall down if I run. I don’t want to fall down, waaaaaaahh!” After a while I figured out that 3 of the kids on the team were cousins—Italian cousins wearing lots of gold bling on the field with 6 parents and 2 grandparents on the sideline yelling in both English and Italian. It was fun to listen to until they started debating about the name of our team’s sponsor, “Do it all Dan”. Yeah, the other teams had Red Robin, Best Buy, the mall; we had some guy who calls his business, “DO IT ALL DAN”. The conversation regarding what Dan would really do flowed between the two languages.

Shmoo was excited to play in the game—they let him be goalie first. Most of the time when he was goalie he stood turned around facing us and waving. I’m glad the ball never made down to him-he would have been kicked in the hiney.

(Shmoo in one of his more serious goalie moments)

After a few minutes, they traded him out with the “I don’t want to run” girl and he joined the mass of kids swarming the ball. He had his few minutes of fun and soon enough there was a tangled mess of kids falling down and he hit the ground, face down, pretty hard. Since all the parents were standing on the field (because the kids only take up 2% of the field at any given time) Honey was close by and walked him out to sit with us. He wailed for a minute or two, and as he buried his face on my shirt, he wiped the biggest, grossest booger ever on me. Parents were walking by asking if he was ok and I was trying to cover up the giant green slime on my shirt without looking like I was hiding my boob with my hand. Honey finally found an old crusty Kleenex in our chair and no sooner had I wiped off the toxic booger, Shmoo turned around, poked his finger in my face and said, “I just dug this out of my ear!” And he tried to hand me the biggest, grossest piece of ear wax ever. I will never go to another soccer game without a box of tissue and a Costco sized bottle of hand sanitizer. There was no way to look cool in front of the young, cute British soccer trainers. Just no way.

We thought that Shmoo’s facial injury would be the worst of it, but then we got the dreaded fundraiser pamphlet. Since we don’t sell door to door and we don’t know anyone here well enough to shame them into buying over priced cookie dough or pizza kits, we’ll be expecting checks in the mail from all interested out of state family members ;) We’ll make the cookies and take pictures of us enjoying them for you!

I can’t wait until next week!