Itty Bitty Soccer

So Jocelyn is in the local recreation department soccer program right now. It's only a month long and they keep it quite age appropriate-meaning they mostly rotate around to different soccer "skill" stations with the coaches so they can learn what it means when the coach says "pass" the ball, or "dribble," etc. It's pretty comical and the most common instruction for the whole group is "don't use your hands" so they were a little confused when they got to the station where you learned how to do a "throw in" after the ball goes out of bounds. It has proved quite entertaining, especially when they are using the cones as telescopes instead of a marker of where to stand, and Jocelyn thinks she has an audience for her dance moves instead of fellow soccer players.

I purchased a few items so she was all geared up and very excited (besides the fact that she insisted she wear the shin guards OUTSIDE of her socks) until about 10 minutes before we needed to leave. She flipped a switch into pure panic and told me she was never going to play soccer, that we needed to take the equipment back to the store and that she was not leaving the house. After Jared bribed her with a cheeseburger we got her, very reluctantly, into the car. She was crying and being ridiculous the first couple minutes until we said fine, we’ll just go home to bed and started heading toward the car and then she flipped her switch again and was fine. She rotated to all the different practice stations and did quite well. The second week it was the opposite, she did great the first half and lost it the second half. Hopefully we can make it the whole way through this week! At this point it's definitely about the social aspect not the soccer skills and this fit our budget and our time. Hopefully she can be more comfortable the next time we sign up for a program and she needs to jump in to something new with kids she doesn't know. She's pretty determined to do a ballet class next so we'll look around for that next, I suppose. I just can't believe my little baby can do all these things! It's bittersweet...