Cheerleading!

My 8 year old daughter signed up for pop warner cheerleading. She had no idea what it was until I opened my mouth and told her about it. I loved cheering when I was a kid, so I thought it would be fun to have my kid do it. I obviously had loved it so much that the time commitment was no big deal back then. After the first meeting this past May, I realized that having my daughter on the team was going to involve many hours of practicing, lots of time in the car driving out of town to practices, and weekend games that will kill our weekends for 2 months. The most disturbing part was the strict rules. The worst one being, if you are over 5 minutes late your child has to run a lap. This "league rule" has my mom undies in a bunch. I can understand these rules for making high school students be responsible, but for pete's sake these are little kids. My daughter is 8 years old and not driving the car that gets her to practice. Oh, and if your child is late because of work, they let the rule slide. So I guess since I stay home with my kids I am expected to be perfect. With 4 kids, a baby that needs spontaneous feeding & diapering, sibling fights, last minute lost shoes, a dog that won't get inside when you have to leave, a 25 minute drive on country roads with no-passing zones, sometimes sharing the road with slow drivers or tractors, and 3 car seats to buckle, we are 99% running behind on time as it is. I just can't get calmed down about this rule.
Yesterday was the first day of practice. All summer my daughter was nervous and going back and forth with deciding if she was going to go through with being on the cheer team. She decided to try it. Of course she LOVED it, so we are in for the long haul. When I came home with the practice and game schedule my husband was kind of ticked off because of the commitment and the fact that our last few weekends of summer just went up in smoke. He even said, "I wish you had discussed this with me first." Hello- I did tell him, but he has selective hearing. Plus, when you sign up they do not give you the calendar of events up front. I didn't tell him yet that the parents have to do a certain amount of volunteering and that I signed him up to be on the chain gang at the first game!