I signed Annabel up for another drawing enrichment, but the morning of the first class I got a call saying the class had been canceled. I guess only two kids had signed up, so the teacher opted out of that time slot. Of course, the call came about five minutes after I’d hyped Annie up to start drawing again. Luckily, the school had a space left in its soccer class, if Annie wanted it. I put the caller on hold and said hesitantly, “Annie? Do you want to take a soccer class?” Her resounding YESSSSS!!! sealed the deal.

I showed up at the tail end of the first class and it was chaos. Organized chaos, but still chaos. There are about twelve kids in the class, all between the ages of three and five. I was laughing because the scene looked exactly like you’d imagine it. The coach totally had a handle on things, but the kids were running evvvverywhere.

Every Tuesday I remind Annie that she has soccer, and she responds enthusiastically. Yesterday I arrived at her class fifteen minutes before it ended so I could get some soccer action. I expected to see Annie running around like a crazy person, but instead she was sloooooowly dribbling the ball on the sideline.

thrilled by soccer

thrilled by soccer

When she wasn’t slowly dribbling, she was picking the ball up with her hands.

thrilled by soccer

But mostly? She looked like she did. not. care. With Annie, that means only one of two things: She legitimately doesn’t like something; or she is sick/injured.

thrilled by soccer

The other kids were running circles around her, and she was like, “Meh. I’m going to sit here on the grass and pick tiiiiiny flowers.”

I tried to stay out of Annie’s line of vision, but she saw me after a few minutes and then slooooowly made her way over to where I was sitting. She looked glum.

“What’s wrong, Annabel?”
“MY LEG HURTS AND IT’S BROKEN!”

Oh, well if that’s all. I ran through my list of quiz-questions to determine the nature of the injury. She eventually told me that in her dream the night before, she’d broken her leg. She was upset that she didn’t have “something really special to make my leg feel better.”

“What’s something really special, Annabel?”
“You know! Like a cast! Or maybe some whipped cream!”

Who knew whipped cream had the power to heal injuries sustained during a dream? I’m no doctor, though, so when we got home I gave her a couple squirts on a spoon and whattaya know? She made a miraculous recovery!

I don’t want her to do activities she doesn’t enjoy, so I need to figure out if the “injury” was because of soccer, or if something entirely unrelated was under her bonnet. She looked happy after the other soccer classes, which is good, but since getting school details out of her is like pulling teeth, I doubt I’ll ever find out what the deal was. Unless, of course, she was just scamming for whipped cream. Who could blame her? That stuff is delicious.