Adventures in T - Ball

I'm the worst mom ever and I'll tell you why: I hate T-ball. Sparky coaches the boys' soccer and basketball teams, so by the time baseball season rolls around, we are pretty burned out. Thing 1 decided not to play baseball this year, and we did a silent cheer when he wasn't looking. Thing 2, however, loves snacks and trophies, so he wanted to play again this year. We put on our happy faces and signed him up for the Orioles, since he played on their team last year. Bad move. They have a new coach, and he is super nice, but any skills Thing 2 has picked up this year have been from the few minutes here and there we've spent working with him in the yard or at the park. I'm not one of those parents that dresses up the whole family in Orioles gear for the games (we have some of those on this team), or is living through my kid's experiences, pushing him hard, dreaming of him pitching in the world series. I just, you know, want there to be a point for us to sit through two games a week besides getting to take pictures of him in catcher's gear (so cute!), and the fact that we paid for him to do this. But I could live with this if it weren't for the whole T-Ball Snack Fiasco of 2008 *cue scary music*.

A couple of weeks ago, it was our turn to bring the snack. Now I should preface this by saying that I have issues with the whole snack thing. Why can't it be like when we were kids, where every once in a while your mom showed up at half time with a bunch of cut up oranges and everyone was happy? Our kids have gotten ridiculous snacks in the past - the 3 course meal snack, the Halloween-came-early-this-year snack, and what I like to call the happy meal snack, where it comes with a toy. Now maybe I'm just being the T-ball Scrooge and I need to lighten up a little, but I refuse to spend 50 bucks or more on the snack. So anyway, we had the snack, and it wasn't horrible - craisins, a granola bar, a fruit roll, and a little bottle of gatorade. A little on the healthy side, but I don't think the kids would have tossed it in the trash on the way home. After the game I went on the field to give it to the kids, and the team mom comes over and stands right in front of me with this big cooler. I asked her what she was doing, we had snack, and she told me not to worry, she just wanted to give something out because she had forgotten to bring snack the week before. So then the kids come over, and she starts handing out her bags-o'-candy and drinks, and Thing 2 ends up being the only kid that takes one of my snacks. The team mom was completely unapologetic, and I was fuming. Thing 2 looked at me with big worried eyes and said, "Mom, I thought we had snack." Sparky kept giving me sideways glances, waiting to see when I was going to explode, but luckily I held it in until we got to the car.