Snowballs Can Lead To Tears

Yesterday, Ethan came screaming up the driveway, with blood pouring out of his nose. Needless to say, but I FREAKED out. We had some trouble when he was in Kindergarten with some girls that used to live across the street being mean to him. They have since moved, but I was afraid this was a repeat of that, only with new culprits. It wasn't. Apparently, he got off the bus and said to his friends, 'Let's have a snow fight!' and launched a snowball at one friend, who was about 3 feet away, and his other friend, who was standing right next to him, hitting both in the chest. He said he bent down to pick up more snow, and when he stood back up, the friend who was standing next to him threw a snowball....In his face. His nose was bleeding all over the place, his cheek was all red..It wasn't pretty. I finally got the bleeding to stop, and David used his first aid training to check it out and it wasn't broken. He does, however, have a super awesome bruise on his right cheek under his eye where the snowball hit him. David went and talked to the kid's dad. We weren't mad. Ethan did start the snowball fight. We just wanted to let him know what happened, and make sure the other boy wasn't hurt when this all went down. He said the dad was super nice about the whole thing. However, super nice hasn't gotten us anywhere in the past. Case in point...

Ethan had a little friend that lived across the street. He was actually the brother of said mean little girls from the bus stop. He, however, was a sweet kid. Nice, polite and quiet. Well, one day, the little boy came over to play. I was at work at the time. Well, the boy's dad came to the house to tell the boy to come home. When he was getting up to leave, David noticed a toy walrus on the ground, and asked if it was the boy's. The boy said no, and Ethan said that maybe it was his own toy. Boy left with dad, Ethan went back to playing. The next morning, I saw the toy, and asked Ethan about it. He said the boy had left it. I told David about it. That afternoon, when Ethan returned from school, David took Ethan and the toy to the boy's house and explained the misunderstanding, had Ethan return the toy and apologize for the misunderstanding. The dad thanked him for returning the toy and was nice about the whole incident. However, the mom decided then that she hated us. She told the boy not to come to our house anymore, and if he came over or even talked to Ethan, he would be grounded. How did I find this out? She had her 10 year old daughter come to my house, barge right in and lay down the law. Oh yeah. She just walked right in and told us what her mom said. Are you kidding me lady? Making your kid deliver that message..Nice. When I went over to talk to the mom about it, she refused to come to the door, and had her child, once again, tell me she had no interest in speaking to me. I don't know what we did that was so wrong. We're quiet neighbors. We keep to ourselves. We do talk to our kid's neighborhood friend's parents, because I like to know whose yard my child is playing in, and whose kid he's playing with. Was it because there was a misunderstanding with the toy? If that's the case, you better never schedule a playdate lady, because toys get mixed up all the time, and you're likely to lose a lot of friends for your child if you get ticked because a toy gets left behind. Toys get mixed up, left behind or forgotten all of the time. It's not a big deal. Ugh...No worried though. They moved away last summer, so no more of her. I felt terrible for her son though. He would stand at the end of his driveway and wave to Ethan with such a sad look on his face because he wanted to play. Hopefully, where ever they move to, he's making friends that he can actually keep.