Liam the chef

I came downstairs this morning to find that Liam had already made his breakfast. My first clue into this observation was the smell of something burning horribly. My second was him sitting at his chair with a bitter-beer face on nibbling at his oatmeal.

I asked him what had happened. He told me that he burned his oatmeal. How? I asked. He didn't have a good answer for that. He thought he had done everything right.

Looking at the bowl provided no clues. There was oatmeal swimming in milk with bits of black everywhere. Curious.

So I dumped that bowl out and asked him to show me what he did. He went into the cupboard, got a packet of oatmeal, opened it, put it into the bowl, then moved off to the microwave.

Anyone paying attention? Did you see the missing step?

Yup - he put powdered oatmeal into the microwave completely dry! That doesn't work so well. I asked him "What about the milk?" He immediately slapped his head (Hey - it saved me from doing it!)

Duh.

I think he'll get it right from now on.

A (soccer) star is born?

Seamus is playing soccer again. This time he is actually 'of age.' He played last season but wasn't quite at the 5-year entry point. But he's been coached by his brother Liam for 2 years, so we figured he was ready.

He had speed, skills, and aggressiveness. But he had no focus. So he'd run quite fast - just in the opposite direction. He didn't do too well over the season.

I took him down for his first game Saturday. We got there late (of course). They had already started, so the coach had him sit out the first part. I sat down to watch, and immediately two strong girls on the other team zipped down the field and scored a goal. Not a good sign - the game was all of 2 minutes old. Nobody on Seamus' team even really moved.

So I called Seamus over and showed him what had happened. I wanted to impress on him that he needed to put in some effort to help his team. He seemed to be paying attention.

Right then his coach called for him and put him into the game. Sure enough here come the two girls. But instead of scoring, Seamus met them, stole the ball, and took it down the other way. He missed his shot, but put in exactly the effort I asked for from him.

The rest of the game was much of the same. Seamus and the opposing girls going head to head. He only played about 1/2 the game, but played hard the entire time.

At the end the score was 6-2 in favor of our team. They scored their two goals while he was out.
Oh, yeah. And our 6 goals? Seamus scored 5 of them!

My happiest part of the day was watching Liam cheer him and encourage him. And then to see Seamus run to him after a goal and jump into his arms. It was a total Kodak moment!