| It's Little League baseball season again. Something I used to complain about, but after surviving the nightmare of insane Pop Warner Football people and obsessed Club Soccer families…I now totally and completely embrace the sport of baseball. It fits us perfectly. The first couple of practices are always a hot bed of activity for the parents. Due to this thing called ‘mandatory volunteer’ clause. Which is the best oxymoron ever. If it is MANDATORY then you are not volunteering right? But that is okay….I love helping out. Because as you know by now… I am THAT mom. The one who is all involved and happy to be there. The one wearing the team colors from head to toe. So I will be pitch counting the games, scraping, setting up and watering the field, coordinating parties, applying band-aides and more. (We have the world’s best team mom already. But yes, I did volunteer to do it. Cuz I am insane.) So you might be surprised by what I have to say today. I am over the team SNACK thing. 
Do you know what I am talking about? So when a new team starts a little list goes around and all the parents pick a day to ‘bring an after the game snack.’ The boys on our team are ages 9-11, not toddlers or even infants who have to eat something every 3 hours. I am pretty damn sure my kids can wait till after we get them home to eat. And the majority of our games are at 6:30 at night. Meaning we will be ending about 9:30. What the hell is an appropriate snack then? A warm glass of milk? So let’s say your kid just has to have a snack. Just HAS to eat the very minute the game is over…well, here is a radical idea... How about YOU bring YOUR OWN kid a snack? This would also eliminate the whole ‘snack-one-upness’ thing that goes on. The first week someone brings a granola bar and a juice, the following week that mom has to try to out-do…so she brings cookies and Gatorade. After a few weeks it has progressed to custom baseball themed cupcakes and ice cold glasses of milk or even pre-packaged $6 baseball theme box-snacks. If you are assigned one of the last games of the season, you start to consider bringing in a caterer or a roach coach to feed these poor hungry children who had to go a whole THREE hours without eating and are surely to pass out and die if they don’t get nourishment before they drive the 10 minutes home after the game. If they had needed me to be the team mom, the first thing I would have implemented was getting rid of the team SNACK thing. While reviewing our current game snack assignments for the season, I mentioned my idea to Jack. He of course looked me in the eye and said “No Snack? Mom, that is un-American.” * Can anyone explain to me the point of these team snacks? Do you feel differently? Agree? Let me know in the comments...
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