take it easy, man

Fox is currently obsessed with sports.  I'll have to look back at old posts, because I feel like he has actually been in this phase for a while but he is seriously high maintenance right now.  He wants someone (usually me) to be outside playing either basketball or soccer with him for a majority of the afternoon.  I generally try to be present (as in, not doing the cooking and cleaning I know I should be doing) but I am having a hard time finding the balance between the playing and the "doing work" that needs to be done.  Here's the other problem - he isn't that fun to play with - he won't just kick the ball around with you - first he says, "you're on my team" then he'll attack you and say, "no, no, you are on the other team", then if you get the ball he says, "no, now you're the coach" which actually sounds pretty cute, but he gets genuinely annoyed if you don't do exactly what he says immediately.  Um, Hello, dude, can you chill out?

He was out working on basketball for a while the other day.  I moved the basket to the lowest setting and he just kept throwing that ball up there.  The closest he got was to the bottom of the net, but he's getting there.  He was going strong until the ball came down and hit him on the face, and he decided it was time for a break :)  Oopsey.    Luckily, he doesn't hold a grudge (at least not in sports so far).

I think he might be a kicker if he ends up playing football.  Not because he likes soccer (although that also seems like a decent connection), but because the main thing he likes to do with the football is throw it up and over the fork in the tree out front.  He is using it as the uprights in football, and no matter how many times I tell him that's not really how it works, he just doesn't care!  He wants to play his own way :)