Soccer

Ethan's first season of soccer has been interesting, as well.  After Caleb played soccer at age three and it didn't turn out to be a good experience for anyone, we had planned to make Ethan wait until he was four.  But he talked us out of it.  He wanted to play so badly, and since he'd already had to sit and watch while Caleb played three seasons of soccer, we decided to give it a shot.

The first two game nights went well.  Ethan listened to his coach, stayed pretty focused, and (literally) ran circles around the other kids.  But at some point during the third soccer night, he started getting frustrated with other kids kicking the ball away from him and started checking out.  Now, Caleb checking out means that he sits down on the field and picks blades of grass.  Ethan checking out means that he finds someone to play with.  Unfortunately, all the available playmates were supposed to be playing soccer, so he decided to be entertaining enough (or annoying enough) to get them to stop playing soccer and pay attention to him.  You can imagine the effect a class clown has on a 3-year-old soccer team.  Let's just say when Ethan lost interest that night, there was a lot less soccer going on.  

The next time, he didn't even attempt to get involved, he just did his best to distract others until we took him out of the game.  The fifth night was the worst, and he ended up watching a most of the game from the sidelines after getting a spanking from Mommy for disobeying his coach.  We've got three more soccer nights left.  If things don't improve significantly, I will have no problem telling Ethan that he is going to spend the spring sports season sitting out and watching Caleb play baseball or soccer.