Put on your tapered leg pants...

... and wear a holiday themed sweatshirt, because oh my god you guys - as of next Monday, I will be a soccer mom.

Abby has been waiting patiently to turn 5 so she could play soccer, so since her birthday is in 3 weeks, it's about that time. I can't wait to see those tiny kids running around kicking in the general vicinity of the ball. I'm excited to laugh at the hijinks of 4 and 5 year olds who've never played before. I mean, to see them learn skills and sportsmanship.

On the other hand, Riley started yet another season of softball, which I am much less enthusiatic about. Sorry to offend any of you that might like softball, but ack. It is SO BORING. It's bad enough on it's own, but when the kids are little and can't get the pitches over the plate and then the coach has to come in and pitch pretty much EVERY TIME, but not before we sit through a bunch of throws that don't make it remotely near the plate. Luckily, there's a sort of three-pronged escape clause. The game is over when one team gets a certain amount of points OR the game has reached a time limit OR we've gotten to a certain amount of innings. Whichever comes first. And since I'm totally complaining about this, I'll say that three-pronged or not, none of those can come soon enough. It usually ends up being the time clause, because no one can get enough hits to make the point thing and no one can get enough outs in a timely manner as to help along the inning thing. It's good times, I'm telling you.

Speaking of prongs, last season we were driving home after a particularly looooong game in which the score was like 5 hojillion to 2, and Riley was like "If we would have had just one more inning, maybe we could have won!" (oh the eternal optimism of children) and I said to Chris under my breath "Yes! If we would have had just one more inning, I would have totally stuck a fork in my eye so I had an excuse to get out of there!" We laughed for a long time with Riley saying "What? What?" But of course I would never say that to her. Chris (who is also no fan of softball) thinks its unfair that I get to do soccer with Abby and he HAS to do softball (we're such awesome parents - being supportive of our children and their sports decisions) but I told him not to worry. I would at least come to a couple of games and I would even leave my fork at home. Unless we're at an all-day tournament, in which case, all bets are off.

I sound horrible, I know, and I do want the girls to play sports, it's just that is it too much to ask that they play a sport that we might be interested in watching? Their mom signed Riley up for softball, and then conveniently left the state for 5 weeks. Coincidence? I think not.

In other news, last night we were walking to the park and the girls were riding their bikes. Riley said "how come when I stop I can't balance on my bike, but when I start up again, I can balance?" I said "It's physics, baby. You'll learn about it in high school." And she's like "But why? Why does it do that?" So Chris said "It's physics honey - you're going to learn about it." But this was still not good enough. "Is it because I'm moving and not moving? Does that make me balance better?" And I said to Chris (under my breath of course) "Does she not understand that when we tell her that she'll learn something in high school, that means 'WE DON'T KNOW and don't want to sound stupid'?" Sigh. Now I guess I'm going to have to see what the internets say about bike balancing and the like.