Natalie and Soccer

For some reason, the date cutoff for soccer is August 1st instead of September 1st, like it is for school. That means that Natalie misses the cutoff and instead of being the youngest in her group, she is the oldest. She is technically in the U7 group which means that she was "under 7 years old" as of August 1st of last year. In the Fall season, she "played up" one year, meaning that she played with girls who were also in the second grade at school. That team was U8 or under 8 years old as of August 1st. They did away with that team and those girls were split up and moved to the next group up (U9 or under 9 years old). Natalie wanted to "play with the big girls" and not the girls her own age. This meant that during this Spring soccer season, she "played up" two years. Because of the rules they play under, she couldn't play in games, except for when she played games in her own club. Despite this, she still wanted to play with the "big girls" and we only had three of her games to go to for this Spring season.

Tonight was the last game. Natalie's coach has a U9 and a U10 girls' team. Tonight, her U9 team (Natalie's team) played her U10 team. This meant that Natalie was as much as three years younger than some of those girls on the opposing tram. Patrick wanted me to take this picture of the size discrepancy. Notice also that Natalie is pushing that much larger girl. Natalie wasn't very aggressive during most of this game, except for this instance and another time when she managed to kick the ball despite being almost on her knees.

I had to post this picture too because she was caught "in the act" of scratching herself. She has eczema, and often gets dry skin patches, especially on the back side of her legs. She's obviously itchy on her head too. Scratching herself is such a routine act that she doesn't even realize she's doing it anymore. When I showed her this picture, she just gave me her embarrassed face.

In other news, we got an iPad today!!! I typed this blog entry on it. Anthony thinks it's cool and keeps asking to touch it. :)