What do you do when......

......your kid decides he hates the new activity he has just tried once?

I'll start from the beginning of the day (yesterday).

I loaded the boys into the van and we headed to gymnastics.  On the way, along Mountainview, I spotted a pile of vibrantly coloured plastic.  Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a little tykes climber.  Score!  I pulled into the drive-way, knocked on the door and asked the PJ'd man if he was getting rid of the climber. He was soooo happy I was going to take it instead of it going into the garbage.  Not happy enough to help me load it in the van though!  It barely fit, was bigger than I thought, and I ended up having to leave our stroller at the man's house (thereby ruining the plans I had for after gymnastics).

Once we made it to gymnastics, both boys had a great time.  Nana showed up half-way through to watch, the boys were thrilled to see her.  After gymnastics, we headed up to the Glen so that I could drop the climber off there (allowing me to pick up our stroller on the way home).  Once there, we filled up the water table and mini pool and the boys were soaked in no time.  After some swimming and splashing, the boys decided they needed to wash their gator and have some ice cream to cool down.  It was HOT yesterday.

The climber will look like this, once it's set up.  I think we're going to take it to the cottage.

After some lunch at Nana's, I took the boys home.  H fell asleep on the way, and had a super long nap.  Water play really tires him out!  Drew and I played outside for a bit at our house, but it was crazy hot, and I wanted Drew to rest a bit before soccer (which apparently didn't help the situation any once we got there).

We headed inside and played lego and trucks for the rest of the afternoon.  Once H woke up, we headed back up to the Glen.  Lots of pool time/water play throughout the afternoon and a hot-dog supper led us to the big moment.  Drew got all dressed in his soccer uniform and I took him to Stewarttown to play his first game.

It was pretty overwhelming once we got to the fields.  There were a ton of games going on, I didn't count them, but I would guess 10 or 12?  Add in all of the kids waiting to start their games at 7:15 and you can imagine all of the people there.  The format for the games is 30 minutes of practice followed by 30 minutes of 3 on 3 game time.

He seemed ok once we first got there.  There was a bit of waiting around, and then he met with his team on the field.  They them called all of the kids in the middle so that they could do a large group warm-up, at this point, Drew decided that he had to go potty...a quick trip to the johnny on the spot and we were back to the warm-up.  This is where things started to go wrong.  He missed the instructions, and Drew does not like it when he doesn't know for sure what's going on.  He followed the instructions as best he could and somehow ended up in tears once it was all done.  He came running out to me, and wanted to leave right then.  Ugh.

I talked him in to trying it out for a bit.  He was upset that he didn't know how to play.  I told him that no one knew how to play....it took some time, but finally got him to join in to the practice.  This part seemed to go ok.  He kicked the ball back and forth with another kid and then they started the game.  He was the first one on, played his time and then the coach told the kids to head to their parents for a second and get some water (did I mention it was hot??).  Here is where I win the "worst parent of the year" award.  I forgot the damn water!  So, the little man was exhausted, AND thirsty.  The rest of the time did not go well.  He refused to go back on the field for most of the rest of the time, and sat with me, instead of his team.  At the very end, the coach finally persuaded him to go back on.

He hated it.  Was so mad at me for putting him into it (he ASKED to play it!!!) and I couldn't help feeling disappointed that he didn't have fun.  It seemed like he was the ONLY kid who wasn't having fun.

We headed back to Nana and Papa's to pick H up and rehydrate Drew and then headed home for a very late bedtime.

I'm not sure what to do.  He asked me today to "un-register" him.  My gut tells me that if we spend some time practicing with him this week, keep playing up the positives of soccer and (ahem) NOT forget the water next week...it will get better.  So that's the plan......hopefully it won't be so hot next week too, that would probably help things.

Wish us luck.