Milestones

We had our first experience with Youth Sports last night; Casper is starting soccer at the YMCA, with one-hour practices once a week and "games" on Saturday mornings. Her team is 3-PreK, about 12 kids, about evenly divided by gender. (Though, sadly, there were a couple of 2nd-3rd grade teams playing nearby, and both were about 85% male, so it looks like it doesn't stick.) Her coach seems good; he's a father of 4 and has been coaching for 10 years, and his youngest daughter is on the team. They did some dribbling - chasing the coach while dribbling, then chasing one of the kids in turn. They alternated with practicing taking shots on goal (with the coach defending). They also spend some time cheering and creating team spirit. Their color will be green, so they decided to name themselves the Monsters; when it started raining lightly they decided they would be the Rain Monsters.

Casper was adorable. She was shy at first and also trying to eat some dinner, since there was no time between when we picked her up from after school and the start of soccer. She got freaked out when the team yelled "Hello Casper!". She tended to get frustrated and discouraged when "her" ball got taken by someone else (after a shot on goal, or in the mixup of dribbling) and would put her hands on her hips and pout. She runs like a girl and isn't very coordinated, but then, she's my kid, the tallest on the team and hency gawky looking, and we have never done any sports with her. She kept up okay. Other kids had issues too, and came to sit with parents on the benches at various points, and the coach was good at noticing who needed encouragement and letting them score on him. He gave out lots of stickers, too.

So, we will be shopping for shin guards (the built in to socks kind are recommended, and are $4 at Target) and a size 3 soccer ball.

Dillo loved soccer more than Casper, if anything. He sometimes got into the mix but held his own. I cleverly brought ball-ball, so he'd have a ball of his own to play with.

In other milestones, Casper brought home a Junie B. Jones book from the school library, and mr. flea has been reading it to her. It seems to be providing a good opportunity to discuss social issues at school, and how to be a good friend and classroom citizen. mr. flea also finds it hilarious at times.

Dillo has been so consistently interested in watching us use the toilet that I have encouraged him to start playing with and "using" the potty we have. He sits on it fully clothed, with the lid down only. Opening the lid scares him a bit, and when he is naked and I suggest he sit on it, he is not interested. But he says poo-poo and pee-pee when we talk about the potty, and I tell him that when he is a big boy he will do these things on the potty. I am hoping to avoid the mistake we made with Casper, which I think was waiting too late and turning potty-training into somewhat of a battle of wills.

Tournament of Guessing

For the past 4 years, a friend has organized a basketball pool for friends and family. Some know and care a lot about basketball; others of us, not so much. In the past, methodologies for choosing winners have involved a cat named Sparky and a dog named Pauly, 19th century memoirists from Southern religious colleges, and the inimitable logic of my friend's cousin ("UNC always wins. Schools with funny nicknames ('La Tech') win. Anything associated with televangelists loses."). This year, Casper and the Dillo have entered brackets. We are doing the women's playoff. Here is how the process went down:

The methodologies were both complex and random. For Casper's, the left side of the bracket was filled out this way: I had a men's bracket and read out the matchups on the left side of the men's bracket. She made her picks. I then translated the choices to the women's bracket based on seed numbers. She did the right side of the women's bracket directly, again by me reading aloud the matchups. (At once point she said, "why are they playing over and over?") As you will see, she is once again a strong contender for the Illustrious Titles "most wrong in the first round" and "topping out on points first."

For Dillo's bracket, I attempted to have him point to the teams he chose. This did not work. So I used my magical maternal mind-reading skills and divined his intentions. The left side of the bracket was filled out by translating seed numbers from the right side of the men's bracket. The right side of the bracket was done in the normal fashion. (Why yes, I had a problem with printing out the wrong brackets. Thanks for noticing.) I think Dillo actually has some chance of winning. I will note that his overall choices for the winners included "AIRPLANE!" and "BUS!" but I manged to figure out that he meant "UNC" and "MARYLAND" by this.