Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM)

I must say that I had a really, really good weekend. Exhausting, but good.

Saturday I took my oldest to her soccer game for the first time. (Her first game was actually last weekend, but I couldn't make it.) I was amazed at how well she grasped things, even though she's only been playing for a couple of weeks - good ball control, a real sense of defensive strategy and not at all afraid to mix it up. I complain regularly about the Youth Soccer Nazis around here - for years they have been trying to get the woods in our neighborhood rezoned so they can build more fields - but watching the end result on Saturday I was well pleased.

The thing that struck me most, however, was how fast my little girl is growing up. It was a hot, muggy day. In approved soccer fashion, she had her hair in a ponytail and her sleaves rolled up. Also decked out in cleats and shinguards, she seemed a lot older than her six and a half years and I was suddenly faced with a blinding flash of what she is going to look like as a teenager. That's kind of jaw-dropping, because it is so exciting and terrifying at the same time. It's probably just as well that we have these little experiences early on - perhaps it helps us brace a bit for the real thing when it comes.

Well, exhausted as she was from the game, Llama-ette No. 1 wanted to come home and practice afterwards. So we set up some cones in the yard and had at it. As if to counterbalance what had happened at the game, the little girl reasserted itself in her at home, as our practice quickly morphed into football, then wrestling and then acting out that old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs wrestles The Crusher.

Yesterday afternoon I achieved something of a fatherhood peak in that I got all three girls, even the two year old, to help me with some yardwork. First, we all chipped in to move a pile of storm-downed branches and sticks out into the woods. Much was made of the fact that eight hands can do a job better than two. Then they helped me weed the garden path. Fortunately, we've had a lot of rain lately and the weeds were easy to get up, roots and all. Once again, my six year old asserted her particular personality: She couldn't get one obstinant weed all the way out. When I assured her that if she did her best it was fine, she started singing that Sarah Evans song Perfect.

Of course, it couldn't last. By dinner time last night I was ready to strangle the lot of them.

Ah, here's to W.S. Gilbert's "felicity of unbridled domesticity".