Welcome to the Ninja Turtles Futbol Club update. This week Kinsey was in charge of snacks, and I was in charge of coaching… all alone. Most of our friends were at a birthday party out of town, and since we were not able to go, I said I could hold it down with the coaching. Last week was awesome because we had three of us coaching these little kids. This week it was just me, and to make matters worse, when we got there we only had two other kids from our team there. That was the emptiest feeling ever, and slightly embarrassing. The other team had about 10 kids, running drills, and having fun. We had three. Luckily we had one more show up, but I think the butt whooping the team from last week put on us, turned a lot of families off to coming back. But, there is still a game to play.

Have you ever tried to herd cats? This is tougher. I have four boys, who kind of listen to me. I let our best lil guy take the kick off, he took off running down the field, and scored! Last week it took us about 20 minutes to score. I was so excited, that I gave him a high-five, and threw him in the air to give him some positive reinforcement. Cason got jealous, because he came up to me and said, “my turn!” I gave him a high-five, along with the rest of the kids. But, now Cason would not leave my side. He wanted to hold my hand the whole time. Again, I have four kids. One decided to run off the field, another one was sitting in the middle, playing with a flower, Cason wanted to be holding my hand, and then we had one that was actually playing. He ended up scoring again, pretty quickly. Once again, I run to him and give him a high-five. The other team’s kids were wrestling each other, so I didn’t feel bad about my team’s lack of enthusiasm towards  soccer.

After the second goal, Cason said, “that’s my papa!” as ran off the field… and kept running. I couldn’t go after him, because I had to watch the other kids on our team. Kinsey went running after him. Meanwhile, Chloe got on the field and was running around, even got to kick the ball once, before we got her off the field. When Kinsey got back with Cason, he spent the rest of the game laying on the sideline pretending he was dead, with an occasional crying fit. As I looked over, that was the point I realized he is too young for organized sports. He is trying to keep up with kids 1-2 years older than him, and that’s not fair to him. He isn’t even having fun. He just likes snacks, and wearing his cleats, and we can do that at home.

By the end, I handed the snacks to our three other players and Chloe, we drove home, and I sat in front of the TV, drained of energy, eating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fruit snacks, and drinking tiny little juice boxes…