Soccer

Carter started a soccer league yesterday and he loved it! I'm so relieved. I honestly thought he would hate it. I told him the team was named "Power Shots" and he said it should be named "I don't want to be here I want to play video games."

So we weren't going into this one with good feelings. And I messed up several times -- I forgot his ball, I forgot his shorts, I didn't buy the right socks, etc. -- but somehow Carter ended up having a great time.

He'll play a game every Saturday at the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m.

Fall break: Bisbee

We went to southern Arizona for fall break, to the old mining towns of Bisbee and Tombstone.

The best part was taking a tour of an old mine. The tour guide gave Carter two sticks of dynamite to hold, which caused all of us to freak out silently. Carter was kind of whimpering a little.

 

 Bisbee wasn't our first choice. We had booked a fun trip to Cabo san Lucas, but Hurricane Odile destroyed the region and the airline canceled our trip. But we still had fun.

 

s

Food swings

When Carter is low on food, he turns into a maniac. He's a completely different person -- angry, throwing things, trying to provoke us and not listening or obeying. This almost always happens around 4 p.m.

The problem is that when he gets to that point, he will not eat. He knows we want him to eat, but he won't because he is now a demon child. I call it his food swings.

We normally try to head this problem off by giving him a snack around 3 p.m. But sometimes I forget. Such was the case recently when we went to visit Grant and Ava in the afternoon. Things were OK until it was time to leave, and Carter refused to get in the car or listen or do anything. He screamed "No!" to me and ran away. It got to the point where I picked him up and shoved him in the car -- and then he opened the opposite door and ran out again.

For the first time ever, I wanted to spank him. Smack him hard. Instead I left him there, went to Trader Joe's and thought it all over. When I came back to get him, he got into the car with no drama. I think he knew he was busted. Then I laid down his punishment: No YouTube, Xbox, computer or any other electronics for three days.

Well, it was like his whole world collapsed. He was crying, saying how mean I was, how no one cares about him and how he wants to die. Begging me to let him earn back his electronics. I told him he could get back one day and only be grounded for two days if he wrote apology letters to me, his dad and his auntie. He thought about it overnight, then woke up early and wrote all three letters.

He was hoping to earn back the other two days, but that didn't happen. And he handled his time off from electronics remarkably well. I'm so glad today is the last day of fall break!