Soccer Season Ended (a month ago)

Faith's first season was eventful. This has to not only be a small milestone with her; learning how to interact with a team, be aggressive, etc; it is also a milestone for a parent. Not in how you are thinking - we aren't seeing some great transition into the life of suburbia - driving from one thing to the next, etc, though it is happening ; we are seeing our first born experience the hard facts of life :

not everyone is nice
not everyone is fair
people do break rules
there are times to be aggressive
there are times to be assertive
there are times you work hard, with your peers to achieve a goal, and yet, you may not succeed.

deep stuff

ya, so maybe she didn't process all of this, but as a parent you do witness this transition start. You realize you are suddenly yelling at your child to take the ball away from someone who she may or may not know, and literally run and score. where everything prior was all about sharing. so you start to talk about teamwork and sports and times to be 'mean' or rather, 'not as nice.' These are the things we know as parents and we soon forget we had to experience this transition too as a kid. There was once a day when we learned how to function on a team, how to practice in the hopes to win.

All season Faith wanted to score a goal. Towards the beginning she was simply excited that anyone scored. And even though the league doesn't 'keep' score, we all did, and her team won all but one game {which they would have tied if another player had scored in our own goal). So naturally as she processed things over the weeks, you could tell she was slowly starting to want it more. She started really focusing and practicing. It was the first time she was actually making the choice to work hard for something specific, and it was all her. We were so proud of her, the work she was putting in, her focus and her desire to really be a part of her team.

She never scored. She didn't really have too much contact with the ball and I think we can only really say she had only a few actual 'plays'.  Yet are precious, innocent Faith is starting to be a little girl, well an almost 5 year old kid. She is beginning to transition out of the 'happy-jolly' world is a rainbow-phase and realize there is a lot going on in life. No, I am not trying to rush her into big girl stuff, but we are transitioning into a new phase of parenthood watching our first born get 'involved'.

So here are some highlights of the end of the season - More mushy Faith stuff to come in a few weeks for her birthday!