Balance

Ant had been in his room supposedly reading for an hour and was supposed to have lights out by 10 last night, but when I logged into Facebook around 10:15 I saw that Ant had just updated his status.  Hmmm.  I showed Chris, who went into Ant's room and quietly confiscated the PSP while Ant pretended to be asleep.  I just love it when they don't think you're going to catch on.  Just like last night when Chris came to pick me up from school- I saw just a flash of child running into the kitchen as if he'd been there the whole time rather than camped out watching TV.  Chris and I perused Ant's posts and comments and were not entirely happy with what we found.  Chris "woke Ant up" and had him sign in.  (I do have his password written down.)  Chris asked him about all the people he's added- there are some questionable profile pictures in there.  When I let him set up a profile I told him any friend requests needed to come through us, but he hasn't felt the need to do that.  There are four fake Demi Lovatos, Selena Gomezes, and Justin Biebers each, along with other people he says are famous but that are not their actual pages.  Then there are these random girls who look either too old or too sleazy to be anyone he knows.  Chris asked him about one girl and Ant said, "I have no idea who that is."  He swore he hadn't requested her as a friend or accepted her request.  Nice try.  Chris was planning on deleting the whole account but I sent Ant to bed and we changed his password.  Now he will have to be supervised in order to go online.  I think it's a good solution and it forces us to be way more involved in who he's talking to and about what.

In other "Ant is twelve" news, this morning I passed him walking the dogs on my way to work.  Riley was pooping.  Ant waved to me and happily traipsed past, leaving the poop behind.  He isn't even carrying poop bags as a pretense.  We have addressed this only recently, so this afternoon when I get home he will accompany me on my walk and carry a grocery bag and pick up every piece of poop I see.  Think I'm harsh?  Maybe so.  Don't worry, I'm not always an ogre.  I really do look for opportunities to reward him.  I have this stash of Garfield books and hand them out regularly.  Last weekend he saw a cross-stitch and started talking about the latch hook his foster parents bought him.  He'd done a pretty good amount in a week but lost all the yarn pieces when he got here.  I took him to Michael's that day and we bought him a replacement kit and the latch hook tool (with a coupon, of course).  He was excited to relearn how to do it and told me he could crank it out in three days.  Not so, but I'm hoping he keeps it up.  He wants one of these things

 to paint, which are pretty inexpensive, but I told him he has to finish the latch hook first.  I would love for him to do more crafty things.  I also got him reading one of the Imponderables series I used to read at his age.  When we were doing chores I had a lot of homework to do so I did my half hour on, half hour off deal.  I studied while he read, then he would tell me strange facts while we cleaned.  AND- I'm so excited about this- the RNR just ran their yearly article about all the different theater companies in Reno and their upcoming productions.  James and the Giant Peach will be an outside affair at the park- there's no solid dates yet but I wrote a reminder on the calendar- I don't think Ant will ever outgrow Roald Dahl.  I never did.  Even Chris makes references to Miss Truchbull or Matilda occasionally.  I feel like I could take Ant to some of the more grown up plays because he behaves pretty well.  He did great last year at that Lakota Sioux thing that went on for three hours.  I was ready to pitch a fit, but he was great.  And remember that kooky modern dance show we went to?  I thought I had lost them both forever but they both had interesting things to say about it and swore they liked it.  TMCC is doing free showcases of their theater, dance, and music groups and there's a murder mystery at one of the high schools that I think we could all enjoy.  Yay!