my favorite blue-eyed boy

I've been pretty busy and gone most of the day so that's why I'm just now getting around to blogging, not because I've been avoiding it.

Ok, so maybe there might be a reason why Zach is the last of my kids that I am giving an update on. 

There's the good things, like that he joined a soccer team and is having fun.  We've only had practices for a couple weeks, but he's excited to go every time. He doesn't have his own ball yet cause the only size four balls they had were pink, and he doesn't do pink.

He is missing his very first soccer game tonight because he's on a zoology field trip to the zoo.  They are sleeping over at the zoo.  He was excited.  I think it's his first time away from home by himself.  He said he'd miss me but not too much.  I assured him I would miss him more than he missed me, and I really do. 

So that's the good stuff.

I've been putting off the other stuff because I wasn't sure what to say. Or whether or not to say anything at all.

The big drama over here is that Zach is in the market for new friends.  Ok, he has other friends, it's just requiring venturing a little farther than usual to have someone to play with.

His usual go-to friends haven't been so nice lately, and I am doing my best to help Zach cut off ties with them.  They've been downright mean to him.  To the point where he was crying at a birthday party (one of the boys we've had problems with, and has also been his best friend since pre-school) and stayed home from school because his stomach hurt.  I am sure his stomach did hurt, he tends to be more anxious than most, and after talking to him, he and I came to the conclusion that the anxiety over dealing with these friends at school is what was the cause of his stomach pain.  A talk with the nurse said he was spending many of his lunch recesses in her office, mostly just to hide out from these boys (who chased him around and teased him and would tackle him.)   And then they'd threaten to shoot him with airsoft guns, etc.

And that's just how they would treat Zach which is a more recent affair.  They've long since been treating Christopher badly.   Usually just the general stuff, like yelling at him to go home, etc. But I've heard rumors that he's been shot at with the aforementioned airsoft guns.  (Not shot, just shot at.) I yelled at one of the boys for trying to stick his hockey stick in the spokes of Christopher's bike as he rode by trying to make him fall down.

Mean. Mean. Mean.

I'm just having trouble dealing because I really like the families of both of these boys.  I am proud to still call them my friends, even if I want my son to have nothing to do with their boys for the time being.   And my heart breaks for Zach's pain.  These boys have been his friends for as long as he can remember and they just turned on him. He was friends with them separately, but now they have formed an alliance and kicked Zach off the island.

I know one of the mother's is upset with the way things are unfolding. She loves Zach and hopes they are the kind of friends who room together in college.  She told me she's bribing her son to be nice to Zach.  I think her efforts are sweet but totally misguided.  I think my kid deserves the kind of friends who want to play with him because he's awesome and fun to be with, not because they are being bribed to. 

Anyway, maybe I've said too much.  I wasn't sure whether to say anything at all, as I generally try to live by the "if you can't say anything nice..." philosophy, but I promised an update on the goings on in Zach's life, and sometimes it's not all soccer and cub scouts.    Zach's dealing with this pretty well.  He's busy with swimming and soccer and scouts and piano lessons, and he's found other friends that are in bike riding distance from home.  Kids that he's known for awhile, it just hasn't been as convenient to seek them out before.  It's good to branch out anyway. 

So that's it for the updates.  Life doesn't change too much around here.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of babble, drivel, hot air, and inanity.