We have created a monster!!!

Kendra is playing her third season of soccer and she loves it. To start the season she had never scored a goal. Josh gets really worked up about her playing and I have to remind him that she is in FIRST grade for goodness sake!

Kendra is VERY VERY fast, I always dreamed that my kids would inherit their dad's speed and it seems like Kendra may have, YAH!!! Anyways, she is often the first one to the ball and she will kick it and get going and then slow down and let her teamates take the ball. When we asked her about this she said that her coach told her that one of them needed to stay back a little and the other one would kick the ball to the goal. Well, being the good listener that she is and seeing that her teamate was not staying back she was the one that was falling back. What a sweet girl huh? So Josh and I had a chat with her and I told her to imagine that she was going to kick the ball and run all of the way into the goalie net as fast as she could, almost like she was going to run the goalie over. Nice mom huh? I was just trying to instill a little aggressiveness into her. The next game she played better and didn't let up so quickly, but still no goal! So Finally I figured that she just needed one more push, so I decided to bribe her. I know that this sounds horrible, but I had tried everything else and I knew that she had it in her. I told her that we would take her to build a bear if she would score a goal and go after that ball. SHE WAS SO EXCITED!

So we went to the game and right away she was like a whole different little girl out there. She finally had just a hint of intensity. She missed her first attempt, but hey, she had an acutal kick at the goal. But then she got it! We were only a few minutes into the game, I was so excited that I had tears in my eyes. Pathetic I know! She was also excited and as she went to the sidelines I heard her say numerous times, "now I get to go to build a bear." We took her to build a bear right after and she got just a little bear, nothing big, but that was enough for her. The next game we told her that we would take her to get ice cream if she scored (we were trying to tone it down a little.) Well she played even better than the last time. She scored two goals and came VERY close on two others. I keep asking her about her goals and if she is happy that she is playing so good and helping her team win and getting better at soccer. She says yes to all of that, but not like I hoped.

Yesterday she brought home a pamphlet for a soccer camp and Josh says that she was so excited about it that she didn't want to talk about anything else all afternoon, WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!