Today was soccer day and I'm pretty sure I was the only parent who got in a serious hard laughing session. You know those ones where you don't quite fall down but you can't stand straight up anymore laughing sessions? One of those.
Enzo likes to observe. So, when the others start playing right away, Enzo is still watching them. It looks like Enzo is one of the youngest in the group that is open to, I think, 2 to 4 year olds. So, it's hard to tell what soccer practice qualities are about exposure to such events, age, and individual personality. After a while Enzo gets into it and we are playing. For this half hour soccer group it is basically a series of games with parent and child. Eventually we got to a game where each parent is given three discs and we were supposed to keep our legs open so the kids could kick the ball under them and each time we were supposed to throw out a disc so the kids would collect all three. All the parents and kids are in an area and then we start and then my kid goes running out into a field kicking the ball by himself. I start laughing and saying "no, through my legs!" as I pantomime the action. Enzo stops and stares at me from a distance, "gets it," runs up to the ball in front of him, spreads his legs, and uses his hands to push the ball back under his own legs. I start laughing. He did basically exactly what he saw me pantomime. "No; through MY legs." And I can't help laugh more. Which makes him laugh so he does it again. And then I'm laughing harder and trying to pantomime and yelling "MY LEGS" to the only kid who isn't in the circle area with his parent and in my bent over laughter I see Enzo stop and stare at me again because now he "gets it." He runs up to his ball, spreads open his legs like a cowboy and then walks wide-open-legged over the ball. Haaaaaaa! I'm working hard not to fall over at this point and I'm just yelling "My legs!!!! My legs!!! Kick it to my legs!!!" and so the laughing kid starts cracking up and cowboy walks over the ball again! Ahhhhh, it was awesome. Moments like these were punctuated by The Kid jumping on the ball and rolling on it to alternately laugh or to keep me from kicking it which I did once in a while to steer us back to the group which didn't really work especially as I just kept laughing.
Also today I found my new favorite local park. Sunnyvale Baylands Park. Awesome. We walked around forever. Great walking paths, views, nice play grounds, beautiful marsh lands, and lots of remote control airplanes. I took a lot of pictures and I will definitely add more to the 2012 album soon.
