Parenting

Tonight I sit in a pretty quiet living room watching TV and trying to enjoy the peace, but a little boy keeps coming down and bugging me. Rewind 2 hours ago and Mason, Tanner and a friend were outside playing tennis in the driveway. I kept hearing them outside and finally I heard Brad yelling and then Mason runs in crying. Apparently, Tanner got mad at Mason and threw his tennis racket at him, hitting him on the leg and leaving a pretty good bruise. We are really tired of the boys fighting. They don't do this with other kids just each other. It is hard to determine who is at fault. I always seem to miss the beginning of the disagreement. I can totally see why Tanner gets so mad at Mason. Mason is always trying to one up his little brother. He makes sure to always let Tanner know how much older, smarter, or better at what ever activity they are doing. This makes me mad, because I try to explain to Mason he is older than Tanner and should be better at most things than him. That does not mean he should rub it in to his little brother. Tanner has a short fuse and when Mason pushes his buttons Tanner loses his mind and usually just screams at Mason. It occasionally results in violence like tonight. Tanner doesn't like to lose at anything and needs to learn to control his competitive nature and not lose his mind when he thinks he is losing or about to lose. I have banished both boys to their rooms for the rest of the night. I took Tanner's game controllers, but not Masons. I think since Tanner hurt Mason his punishment should be a little bit worse. You would think I was killing Tanner. He has come out of his room at least 10 times. Within 5 minutes he was declaring he was dying of thirst. He says he is getting all stuffy being closed in his room. He is hungry. He is sorry. Can he please just apologize to Mason, etc.... On the other hand I haven't heard from Mason at all.

I don't know how to get them to get along better. Tanner has such a sweet side. While we were at the rodeo carnival Mason kept trying to win a basketball by shooting a ball into the hoop. He wasted many tickets trying to win. Tanner finally tried it and made it on his first shot. Then he told Mason he would try again to win him a ball. Unfortunately he missed. The rest of the night Mason kept trying to steal the ball from Tanner and Tanner kept yelling at Mason to leave his ball alone. That was fun! Then when we got home Mason just had to use Tanner's new ball even though we have at least 3 other basketballs. Tanner would yell to me to make Mason stop using his ball. I hate for Tanner to be selfish, but it is his ball. Where do you draw the line?

Oh well, I don't really know how to handle this, but hopefully being punished for the night will work. On another note here is a cute picture of Tanner's cat. The other picture is of Tanner luring the ducks from the pond with bread into our driveway. It was funny watching all these ducks following him down the street.

spring break 2010

This spring break has been pretty good so far. We did not have a big trip planned, but had a few small things to do. We spent one day at the zoo, went to see a Rice and UT baseball game, and spent a day at the carnival and rodeo. This weekend both boys have baseball tournaments and tomorrow we are planning on having a garage sale. I haven't ever had a garage sale while living in this house. I hope people will come and we make at least a little bit of money.

Basketball and black sock update

Today is the first Saturday since January that we have not had anything to do. Basketball season ended this week. This was a horrible season for Mason. His black socks continued to bring them bad luck. They did not win one game. They usually got beaten by at least 15 points. I am hoping Mason learned something from this. When we signed up to play ball you have to decide whether you want to play in the regular league or be drafted. If you want to go the drafted route you go to a try out and hopefully you get picked by a coach to be on a little more competitive team. If you don't make it at try outs then you get put back in the regular league and they are supposed to form the remaining teams into neighborhood school teams. We have never done the draft in the past because with two kids playing I always wanted them to play in the neighborhood schools so we wouldn't have to drive across town to practices. This year Mason told me he wanted to do the draft because it was his last year to play and it would help him prepare for Jr. High basketball. I thought that was a very mature decision and agreed. The day of try outs I told Mason it was time to go and he said he had changed his mind. He thought if he went to tryouts he would be on a team and possibly be on the B team and if he did the regular league he would be A team point guard and be the best on the team. He doesn't have a problem with self esteem. LOL That is what we did and guess what? He was point guard and the best on the team. The problem was the other kids didn't know what they were doing and you can't play basketball with one player. Mason would get so mad and I tell me those kids shouldn't even be playing. I tried to explain to him that those kids were in the right place. He was the one that chose to take the easy way and was in the wrong place. I also tried to tell him that in order to get better at something you need to push yourself and do something that is challenging. I am hoping he learned that.

On another note, Mason was the only kid that wore the high black socks the entire season. I took the boys to a high school game one night and when we walked in Mason said, "Look Mom!" and pointed to the players. Every one of them had the same socks on as Mason. I guess he does know what he is talking about.

Tanner's team didn't do very well either. They won 2 games, but they were at least pretty close. He and another kid on the team pretty much took charge. Tanner would bring the ball down pass it or shoot it and somehow get back to the other end of the court before anyone else. He is so fast.