She made a liar out of me

I may have mentioned that I have been highly skeptical about the success of Pressley's soccer career. I agreed to let her sign up for soccer, and we bought the stuff, but I really doubted she would ever actually play. I was just trying to be a good mommy and let her learn on her own.

Her first soccer practice was last Thursday, and we had 5 minutes or so to kill after we endured the grueling task that is getting a child into their shinguards, soccer socks and cleats, and this is how she killed the time:

That would be an Americal Girl Doll catalog that she is browsing through, exclaiming on every page, "Ooooh, mommy. I want this for Christmas!" Didn't do anything to boost my already low expectations for soccer practice.

But I dutifully filled a water bottle, put her new pink ball in her new YMCA sports bag, and drove us all over to practice. I was shocked when she trotted right out onto the field with her ball and started kicking it around with her friends. Even more shocked when she ran her little heart out doing sprint drills, and I'll be derned if she didn't then do this:

She fell down many, many times during the various drills, but she never cried about getting dirty. She did, however, stop in the middle of her turn to dribble the ball down and kick it into the goal to brush every speck of dirt off of her knee after she fell before she proceded to complete the exercise. A girls' gotta have priorities after all.

In Evan news, Corin was reading a story to the kids the other night called "What Do People Do All Day?" (As a side note, this book is one of the kids' favorites, but it was clearly written very many years ago when it was ok to write things like, "Rail yards are busy places. Some railroad workers ride in a caboose. The frieght train engineer watches the signals. A hobo doesn't work, but he likes to ride in a boxcar." With a picture of a cat in a jacket with patches on it, carrying a stick with a bandana bundle at the end, and labeled 'HOBO'.)

Anyway, Corin is reading this book and starts asking the kids, "Do you know what daddy does?" Evan: Oh, yeah. You settle arguements, blah, blah, blah. "Do you know what my job is called?" Evan: Ummm, lawyer. "And what does mommy do?" Evan (excitedly): Stays home and relaxes!

Corin got a huge chuckle out of that, but quickly corrected him that mommy works very hard, etc., etc. (Probably mostly because I was within earshot, but whatever works.) Then, luckily, the book helped to further explain the situation by explaining what people do with the money that they get when the provide a good or a service. "Grocer Cat (not to be confused with Hobo Cat) bought a new dress for Mommy. She earned it by taking such good care of the house."

And then I burned my bra.