Soccer, The Dreaded P Word, and Baby Sister

So the first soccer game was a success! And I have to say that it was flat our the cutest darn thing in the world! Our little boy looked so cute in his cleats, shin guards, shorts and jersey. He loves his number 5 for some reason too. The day started with their practice first - and I now think that this is the part Zachary will continually love the most. Each kid practices with their own soccer ball, so everyone's doing something at all times. There's no standing around, and that's a good thing for Zachary who gets bored easily while waiting - but then doesn't every 4 year old! Anyway, the coach tried his best to run a few drills and such with kids fading in and out of attention to him. Zach just enjoyed kicking his ball into the goal a bunch of times! They put little goals on the field between the bigger ones, to shorten the field a bit for this age group. But Zach took a liking to the big daddy goal and kept trying to kick his ball over there and "score" in the big one. He doesn't need the baby stuff! HA!

Anyway, the game started thereafter, and that was so cute. There are some really, really good kids out there for this age. One is a girl, and she rocks! Zach enjoyed running with the pack and such, but he's by no means ready for the Olympic team! He has no desire right now to try and steal the ball from the other team, or get up to the front of the pack to get a kick in for that matter. If the ball is in front of him, he'll kick it though :-) So that's progress! It was a really fun, and fast, hour and I am so thrilled that there are 7 more games! Zach seems excited about playing soccer too!

Now for the Dreaded P Word.... POTTY! UGGGGHHHH!!! I swear that I'm going to have little girl Katie potty trained before Zach is ever 100% there. He does SO VERY WELL for months and then regresses. It's so sad, annoying, frustrating, and very confusing. His new thing is just not wanting to go - ever. He's never initiated on his own at all, but will hold it until we take him after a few hours. That's been the definition of "potty trained" for him. And it's worked well for now. But lately he's still holding it in (mostly) but he's just not wanting to go, and putting up a major fight when we take him. It's the most teeth grinding frustration that we have with him. He's also been waiting for his bedtime diaper to go too, like he was doing way back at the beginning of this long potty journey. So what can we change? More rewards? Take away toys when he does wrong? Threaten him? We've truly tried all these things in rotation for about the last 10 months, and they've all worked well at times, but revisiting them isn't quite as successful. So we'll take deep breaths and hope that this phase passes, again, quickly.

Little girl Katie's room was painted on Monday. And I had previously purchased all her crib bedding, etc. So now it's just a matter of getting the room in order, hanging things, and washing all the bedding. So much fun. Zach is really "getting" that this is "Katie's Room" and so forth. I'm not sure that he understands that Katie's in my belly, but he does seem to get that she's coming and has a room and toys. I've been working the book that I have that tells of a boy becoming a big brother, and trying to over explain it all. So time will tell...

Okay, enough for today. I've got more to talk about - like the WALK NOW, Atlanta walk for Autism. Next time...