Here's how bath night works in our house:
The boys are now old enough to shower by themselves - they supervise each other (I know! But it works for now) and I give the girls a bath together. I run back and forth to the other bathroom a couple of times to make sure no fights have broken and out and no one is using my razor to shave their brother's head and the girls get to play a bit in between.
They have a little tea set designed for the tub that they LOVE to play with. It has, however, been banned on more than one occasion because Little One can't seem to grasp the concept of "pretend" when it comes to drinking her beverage. She chugs. At one point she passed gas in the tub and then shortly after I caught her trying to drink out of one of the teacups. I told her she was drinking "fart water" and that put a stop to that! And now she no longer farts in the tub! Double bonus!
A couple of nights ago, she asked to have the teapot. I told her if she drank out it, I would take it away immediately. As I'm washing her sister's hair I glance over and I could just...tell.
Me: "Did you just put bath water in your mouth?"
Little One: "No! I was washing my tongue!"
Me: "But your tongue is in your mouth!"
Little One: "No! I stuck it out!"
I figured with a creative defense like that I would let her play with it for a bit longer...
With Four Children, The Days Are Long but The Years Are Short!
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Competition
Youngest Boy is playing basketball this year. It's his first year and he's playing on a team with 8 other first year kids. The normal division is to have 3rd and 4th graders on the same team. Because there were so many this year, they divided the teams into two with a pretty even split between 3rd and 4th. Because our 3rd graders are, um, DEFINITELY developmental (which is the whole purpose at this age, and they don't even keep score, per diocesan rules) they allow 1 or 2 4th graders to "help out" during their games.
This works pretty well...depending on the 4th grader. The problem is, there's one kid who is a complete and total ball hog. I'm talking never passes the ball. Ever. Occasionally if he gets trapped he'll kick it out because he has no choice but that rarely happens. It's inbound to BH (ball hog), dribble down the court, maneuver around everyone, shoot, and miss. Every.single.time. Now, the problem is, he's 10 years old. He's doing what comes naturally to most kids that age. My problem is that no one is telling him to do differently. That's a coach's issue.
His dad is one of the coaches (we have 4)(sometimes 5). Last night he was the ONLY coach at the game.
Another diocesan rule at this age is that each player should have equal playing time independent of ability. I agree with this - how will they ever learn to play if they never get to play? And they're 9 or 10 years old! They don't even KEEP SCORE! I've ranted about this before when Oldest Boy was playing. He wasn't exactly a stellar athlete but Youngest Boy has potential. He's not great but he's leaps and bounds better than he was at the beginning of the season.
So last night...BH played the whole game. THE WHOLE GAME. The idea of having 10 players is to make the split even. 5 on, 5 off every 4 minutes (They play 4 8-minute quarters). But there was only one coach, BH's dad, and it got ugly. Some parents left ("I'm not going to stay here to watch my son sit on the BENCH!"). Some yelled at BH ("Pass the damn ball!"). Some of us just sat there shaking our heads. How can you NOT know what you're doing? I don't buy it.
The problem is, it's not like these guys are making money coaching a 3rd grade team. It's their free time they're giving up. And some of them do it well. But I can't blame some of the folks for being pissed, either. You have expectations (well-founded) that your kid is going to play. Sigh.
As far as Youngest Boy goes, he had an OK game. They let him play point for a couple of plays and he had a very nice assist (because he actually looked for the open man and then passed the ball to him). He needs to be more aggressive but he's still learning.
This works pretty well...depending on the 4th grader. The problem is, there's one kid who is a complete and total ball hog. I'm talking never passes the ball. Ever. Occasionally if he gets trapped he'll kick it out because he has no choice but that rarely happens. It's inbound to BH (ball hog), dribble down the court, maneuver around everyone, shoot, and miss. Every.single.time. Now, the problem is, he's 10 years old. He's doing what comes naturally to most kids that age. My problem is that no one is telling him to do differently. That's a coach's issue.
His dad is one of the coaches (we have 4)(sometimes 5). Last night he was the ONLY coach at the game.
Another diocesan rule at this age is that each player should have equal playing time independent of ability. I agree with this - how will they ever learn to play if they never get to play? And they're 9 or 10 years old! They don't even KEEP SCORE! I've ranted about this before when Oldest Boy was playing. He wasn't exactly a stellar athlete but Youngest Boy has potential. He's not great but he's leaps and bounds better than he was at the beginning of the season.
So last night...BH played the whole game. THE WHOLE GAME. The idea of having 10 players is to make the split even. 5 on, 5 off every 4 minutes (They play 4 8-minute quarters). But there was only one coach, BH's dad, and it got ugly. Some parents left ("I'm not going to stay here to watch my son sit on the BENCH!"). Some yelled at BH ("Pass the damn ball!"). Some of us just sat there shaking our heads. How can you NOT know what you're doing? I don't buy it.
The problem is, it's not like these guys are making money coaching a 3rd grade team. It's their free time they're giving up. And some of them do it well. But I can't blame some of the folks for being pissed, either. You have expectations (well-founded) that your kid is going to play. Sigh.
As far as Youngest Boy goes, he had an OK game. They let him play point for a couple of plays and he had a very nice assist (because he actually looked for the open man and then passed the ball to him). He needs to be more aggressive but he's still learning.
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