Seth's First Soccer Game

I could have easily called this "Emily's Saturday Workout" because I think she ran the most of anyone on the field. Most parents look forward to the day when their kids can start sports and we were not different. We expected tears and hissy fits but we underestimated Seth's capacity to melt down....greatly. 

 

We were off to a rough start when the league provided Seth with a parka instead of a jersey. Add in the need to wear shinguards and high socks for the first time and you get one very unhappy little boy. I actually started out on the field with him but after 5 minutes of me simply hugging him, Emily tapped in.

 

Emily got Seth's feet to touch grass. Mom 1 - Dad 0.

While Emily was able to get Seth (after a few minutes of coaxing) to actually walk around the field with her, he wasn't thrilled by it. In fact she had to carry his personal soccer ball around as a bribe. Bringing his incorrectly sized bright orange ball was just one of many bad Dad calculations on the day. 



That kid with the ball could fly (for a 3 or 4 year old). He played a nice European style, complete with an impressively developed flopping technique. He was the match All Star. Notice Emily eyeing the ball intently. She was sick of that kid burning her, I mean Seth....she wants that ball.

Emily was fantastic with him, always being positive and encouraging. Seth was beginning to get more and more comfortable playing and even decided to go for the ball once. Unfortunately he chose the moment when he was outnumbered 3 to 1 with charging 4 year olds coming at him.



This shot doesn't bode well for Seth. Even Emily is kind of steering clear of the collision that is coming.

He got leveled. Destroyed. Anihilated. He put himself out there for 1 play and he discovered just how small he was compared to everyone else.

The best part of that situation was the support the other parents were trying to give me as Seth struggled to enjoy the game. Each had their own story of the difficulty of youth sports and promised me it would get better. As Seth decided to go for the ball, they all got really excited and looked at me with huge smiles on their faces. Then Seth was flattened and you heard a collective groan. One parent managed to say "That was not the best moment for him to go for the ball". After that, nobody said anything to me and tried to pretend I wasn't there. It was an understandable awkward situation.

This is my favorite shot. Why? Because it is blurred....meaning Seth was moving. I wish I could have done a video of this because he made it about 5 feet before he stopped and panicked when he couldn't find Emily.

After watching a bit of the game on the sideline Seth was able to go back on the field. While he stuck close to Emily and made her carry him most of the time, he did have a moment or two were he was confident enough to wander after the ball. I suspect a few of the times the other kids around Emily and Seth simply pushed between them and forced them apart.

Seth was more worried about someone trying to steal his mommy than where the ball went. Notice the size difference between Seth (3rd from the right not including Emily) and the 14 year old pretending to be 4 standing right next to him.

One thing about Seth is that when he reaches his limit, it isnt a gradual decline. He just stops. He was spent, emotionally and physically. Apparently being held by mommy while walking around the field just wore him out and he went down for the count.



And he was done. Not just tired or grouchy....done. He could have atleast collapsed about 5 feet to their left so that he could be protecting the goal. He hasnt quite developed that sports sense yet, it will come.

It was a pretty rough first game. Everyone had comforted us ahead of time, saying that all kids that age mostly cried and didn't want to be there. Nope, just Seth and 1 other kid. That is ok though. He will get used to it and hopefully start having some fun. If not, atleast mommy and daddy will get a good Saturday Morning workout and some orange wedges.

Sloane Update

I need to post a Sloane update.  She is almost 6 months old and I feel like the time is just flying by!  Here are some pictures and an update on her progress.

In early May she got some crazy weird tummy bug.  She threw up once at her babysitter's house and then again several hours later at home.  After that she just didn't want to eat anything.  (I don't blame her!)  But it really started to worry us when she wasn't having any wet diapers.  And then her cute little soft spots started to look a little sunken and I knew she was getting dehydrated.  We were going to take her to the hospital but out of the blue a few days later she started eating again as if nothing had happened.  The best part about it is that she stayed as pleasant as could be throughout the whole ordeal.  She has been such a good baby! 


Even during her sickness, she was super happy.  But I did capture this moment when she was giving me a dirty look.  She wouldn't even crack a smile for me.  I think I was just bugging her when she was trying to sleep.



Happy Mother's Day to me!  Sloane was finally feeling better! 
Love these two kids!

I love this picture because she's missing a sock. My mom has a few pictures of me like this as a kid.

Waiting at the doctor office for her 4 month immunizations.  She was happy as a clam and had no idea what was coming. 
But even after she got her shots, she didn't cry too much. 

I had to take a picture of her crying.  Because she just didn't do it very often as an infant.

Sloane at 5 months. 
She is starting to lift herself up so high when she lays on her tummy. 
I love those big blue eyes!

First time eating solids around 5 1/2 months:  Rice Cereal. 
She seemed neutral about it.  Didn't hate it.  Didn't love it.

 Around 5 months old Sloane really started to move a lot.  She constantly wanted to sleep on her stomach but she wasn't very good about turning her face to the side so she could breathe well.  I had many sleepless nights at that point because I was so worried about her.  I would wake up at 2 am, go in her room to turn her face, check again at 3 am...then 4 am...it was a pretty rough stretch for me.  So Clint's boss offered him some great night vision cameras that she no longer needed.  I was able to just turn on the monitor right in bed and make sure she was ok.  These cameras saved the day.  (They were also pretty fun to have because we put a camera in Seth's room and would watch what he would do after we had put him to bed for the night.)



Sloane...face down in bed.  How she has survived...I don't know.



Sloane's hair is getting so long.  I am not good at doing hair.  I can barely manage my own.  So she will be wearing random weird pony tails for awhile.  After this pony tail day, Sloane's babysitter officially dubbed her "Pebbles" from the Flintstones.

Clint's favorite time as a daddy is when they are asleep in his arms. 
Sloane loves to fall asleep on him.

She's just taking a little cat nap.  What a life!

Grandma asked if we got any reception off these little pony tail antennaes. 

I just love those eyes and chubby little cheeks!

Seth 3rd Birthday

3 years down, only 15 to go! Seth turned the big 0-3 and had a great time. Besides the normally small family gathering we also ventured to the dinosaur museuem at Thanksgiving Point...not sure why we thought he would like a museum at 3 years old but it was still a good experience.

Museum

 

This trip started out rough when I made the idiotic mistake of saying it was Seth's Birthday to the worker. So instead of Seth being free (2 and under) I had to pay $10 for him. Seriously, $10 for a 3 year old? What crap.





Once Seth noticed the dinosaur, he insisted I protect him. I appreciated his faith but didn't have the heart to explain to him that I would do nothing to bother the T-Rex except perhaps get stuck in his teeth on the way in or in his bowels on the way out. 

This room was pretty fun. I think the point was to demonstrate floodplains or something...we just made a dinosaur fort. Seth made it a goal to gather all the dinosaurs from all the other stations. What can you do?

This was a convenient sign for the photo but caused an issue when Seth didn't realize it wasn't really for him. He made a beeline for all the fake presents on the display next to it.


 Dinner

We hit up Seth's favorite food joint for dinner (Chick-fil-A). I didn't take many pictures because it is very difficult to do without looking very creepy. For some reason parents don't like strangers taking pictures around their children.

 

  



Not much exciting to add to this shot.

 

Gifts and Guests

 

To cap off the day we had some family over for a small gathering to accumulate more toys for Seth. I admit to being a little jealous.

 

A cute little motion montage made by Em. She is much more artsy than I am.

One of the few days of the year where Seth is allowed to eat all the sugar he wants. I welcome the sugar coma that naturally follows.

Sweet and simple decorations...that was my contribution.

Listen, we know Sloane is adorable but it is Seth's birthday. Pay attention....grandparents are always distracted.

Emily's cute gift table. To my, I mean his disapointment, nobody brought the 80 inch TV he asked for.

Seth's Flag Day cupcakes, apparently only good for the frosting. We threw at least 5 away with the frosting licked off but the actual cupcake left untouched.

We dove deep into my past to order a Baskin Robbins Ice Cream cake. Seth wanted dinosaurs (notice a theme) so we ordered a cake and put our own toys on it. Yeah, we rock.

Papa, Janet and Sloane. Both my dad and Janet were good sports and wore the birthday hats while Sloane simply had no choice.

 



Another Picture. Boom!



 

Backyard Spring Project

When we purchased a new home last year, we knew we would have some significant expenses when it came to finishing our backyard.  But I still intended to get that finished last year...that is, until we got the quote for the fence.  It was waaaay more than I expected it to be.  So last spring we got the fence done.  And we got to enjoy a nice big patch of dirt and weeds all summer and winter while we saved enough money to finish the project. 

In the fall we added some trees and had some concrete work done.  We added a concrete pad for a hot tub...when we can afford that...some day???  And we extended our back patio, tore out the wood stairs, and had cascading stairs put in.  I will not go into the details but the concrete work really almost put me over the edge.  Do NOT ever use Brown Brothers Concrete!  Terrible, terrible terrible!  They didn't do a great job, left a huge mess, never came when they said they would, and didn't finish the job we paid them to do.  Just avoid them!

But I digress.  Where was I?

At first I really wanted to save some money and put the sprinklers in ourselves.  When I say "ourselves" I mean Clint.  But he really wasn't sure where to start or how to do it.  I'm sure he could have figured it out but we had a little baby at the time and I thought the stress of it probably wasn't worth the savings so we contracted it out to Superior Sprinkling, a great company.  They got the job done in a day and a half, upgraded our sprinkler system, fixed a malfunctioning valve in our front yard, and smoothed the dirt out for us in the backyard. 

Well worth the money!  (And quite a different experience from our concrete job!)

We had bought a small amount of leftover sod from our neighbor last year. We learned that we have some really annoying little critters (or varmints, as my mom would say) that like to visit our backyard: GOPHERS! Hate them! Hate them! They wreaked havoc on our poor little patch of grass with their mazes of tunnels and dirt mounds!

Nothing really worked to get rid of these little pests.  We killed a few with rat traps but the poisons didn't seem to work.  It made us so hesitant to spend money finishing the backyard if they were just going to come in and destroy it.

So we got a little creative in our efforts to keep the little brats our of our backyard:

Chicken Wire. 

That's right.  After doing some minor grading and raking out big rocks, we laid chicken wire across our entire yard.  We realize that if we ever have a sprinkler problem we will need to cut through the wire to get to the pipes, but we have mapped out where the sprinkler lines are so hopefully it won't be too much of a hassle.  At first I thought I might be going a little extreme...but I was encouraged when I looked online and saw that others had done something similar.

Laying the chicken wire wasn't difficult. But balancing how it was laid was hard. We couldn't lay the sod directly over the top of the chicken wire. Otherwise the gophers would just pull the grass right through the wire and eat it. And we couldn't bury the wire too deep either. Because then the gophers would be able to just burrow in between the wire and the sod. And we realized we didn't have enough dirt to put over the chicken wire so we had to order a dump truck full and haul it into the back yard by wheel barrow.

Bless Clint!  Since it was still really cold in early April, I was stuck inside with Seth and Sloane.  So he had to do most of the prep work on his own.

We realized that one full dump truck of top soil still wasn't enough.  So we had to make several trips to Lowes for more bags of dirt.  So fun.

Sloane kept us company while we loaded the bags of top soil into the car.

Clint always seems to be in good spirits...even after days of manual labor and a sore back, he's willing to joke around for the camera. You might actually think that lawn roller was heavy!  (It was for me.)

Finally!  The day to lay sod had arrived!  It was mid-April, overcast, and a little chilly! 

Nevertheless, I was excited!

Clint was excited too apparently. 

He quickly prepped the dirt with some fertilizers recommended by our neighbor.

Not only did Brian help us lay sod but he helped Clint with SO much of the prep work!  He's a great neighbor and friend!

Jon and Briana helped out so much as well!  I don't know how we got so lucky to have the friends that we have!

We got the grass completely down just before it started raining!  Great timing!  The only problem is that we noticed that our grass was riddled with dandelions.  At first I thought it was no big deal...it was probably just in a couple pieces of sod.  But I started seeing two to three dandelions in each piece.  When I called the sod farm they assured me the dandelions had been cut at the root and wouldn't grow.  Not true!  Within a month, we had hundreds of dandelions spread across our yard.  I wish I had taken a picture of it!  It was so sad!  We finally decided to sign up for a lawn company who will come treat our yard all summer long.

These last few pictures are of the yard as of this morning!  It's greened up really well and so far...no GOPHER holes! 

 

A glimpse at the weed issue we are STILL dealing with.  There are still a lot of weed remnants that we hope will go away over the next few months!