Here are the month’s highlights:
- Luke scores first goal in AYSO soccer
- Dad birthday celebration
- Lilah gets 8-year portrait
- Kids have fun with “Diarrhea” song
- Celebrating aunt Michelle’s birthday
- Lilah “practices” for first triathlon – swimming, biking, and running
Lilah
One of the highlights for Lilah this month was getting her retainer and expander. It’s interesting, she’s actually kind of excited about eventually having braces, even though she’s a little upset that she must stay away from certain foods so they don’t get stuck in her brand new blue retainer. That’s what’s cool about being a kid sometimes — it’s almost like anything new is considered cool, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient it is. Hopefully, she maintains this positive attitude throughout this journey through orthodontia.
School also seems to be off to a good start. Lilah is always telling me how she and her buddy consistently get to read “Buddy” books in school because they finish ahead of the class in their projects.
She also continues to participate in athletic endeavors, the latest being preparing for a triathlon in October. The YMCA is sponsoring a youth triathlon for kids 7 years and older. In order to get them ready they had a mini-boot camp, which ended up being quite a training session. It’s no wonder as the session was conducted by an Australian guy named Leroy who is an elite triathlete who frequently places first in the events he enters. The actual triathlon distance for these kids — many of which will be doing this for the first time — is two laps in the pool, 3 miles of biking and a half mile of running.
For the boot camp, I thought Leroy was simply going to have them swim a lap or two in the pool, ride their bike for 10 minutes or so and then do a little running. Well, it ended up being a “little bit” more than that. Try about 12 laps in the pool by the time he had the kids go through all the drills. Then the kids practiced changing into their bike gear (helmet, shoes, etc.) and getting on their bike a few times before proceeding to ride for about 20 minutes. When they were finished with that, Leroy had the kids do about 15 minutes of running drills — high knees, butt kickers, sprints, etc. — before moving on to the half mile run. By the time it was all over, the kids had been exercising for about an hour and half. I’m glad Lilah made it through, but that was quite a workout. I’m sure Leroy thought it was just a short workout, but I think being an elite athlete makes it hard for him to know exactly what a short, introductory workout should be for young kids. In any case, I have no doubt that Lilah will finish the race now as she covered a lot more mileage in training than she will on race day.
Luke
Luke is really enjoying Kindergarten. Before starting school, he lost three teeth — collecting big time from the tooth fairy — and seemed very proud about this involuntary accomplishment. Perhaps he saw it as a sign of being a big boy who was ready to start his Kindergarten adventure.
One of the coolest things he learned to do this month was write his own name — and his penmanship, believe it or not, isn’t much worse than mine ;-). When I asked his teacher, who also taught Lilah in Kindergarten, whether Luke was shy, she emphatically said no. She just can’t believe how talkative he is (quite a contrast to Lilah’s shyness at this same age). She also said Luke has a knack for figuring out creative or alternative endings to stories and is always more than willing to share his ideas with the class. So far he really seems to be enjoying school and learning new things.
Speaking of new things, Luke also scored his first goal in soccer this month. He scored his goal in the first game of the season — it was the only goal the team scored. It’s kind of funny though because I thought this would be the beginning of many more such moments in my assistant coaching gig, but it really hasn’t panned out that way. After that initial goal, we played two more games where we didn’t score a goal at all. And then, in our fourth game we finally scored one more goal toward the end of the game which led to a big celebration.
Obviously, at this age, playing is supposed to be about having fun and not about winning or losing or keeping track of the score. But man, my friend and I can’t help but get discouraged sometimes because we seem to have inherited a bunch of kids who are more interested in socializing than playing the game. Our biggest challenge this season has been keeping these guys focused on the game. Anyway, we’re still learning our way through this coaching gig and I guess as long as the kids keep having fun and don’t seem particularly bothered about not scoring, then we shouldn’t be overly concerned — although a few more goals would be nice ;-).
That’s all for now…more next month…