And they didn’t have all those extra smart brain cells.
Me to Child 6: A, E, I, O, U are vowels. All the rest are called?
Child 4: Continents!
Child 5: Condiments!
Me: …
This weekend my 8 yr old played in a baseball tournament.
Saturday 8:00am the boys play their first game. They lose the game. We think we are probably out of the winner’s bracket now.
Saturday 5:00 pm the boys play their second game. This one they win. We will find out at 11pm what time we need to be at the field Sunday. We all hope it isn’t for the 7:30am game.
It is.
6am Sunday morning. Getting ready to leave for the field. He has just had a cup of coffee. We are not a family of morning people. It is windy and freezing outside. Sitting at the first game, wrapped in blankets, the dirt from the field pelts the parents in the face. I don’t even take my camera out.
We win the game.
Game number 4 in the series, game number two of the day. I think. Who can remember now, it is all a blur.
I have a bag of mini donuts for my little kids to snack on while we watch the game. My 8 yr old sees them and demands one. Hit the ball to the fence and you can have one, I tell him.
He does and makes it to third base. He comes home on the next hit and immediately sticks his hand through the fence for his donut. The next time he gets up he hits an in the park homerun. By the end of the game I am picking dusty M&M’s out of the bottom of my bag to give him.
They win this game.
Immediately afterward they have their next game. We throw some snacks and juice at the kids to maintain the sugar high they are all riding on. One of the mothers has “magic skittles” She gives each kid one when they come in from the field. The kids believe they are magic. Watching them play you forget that they are only 7 and 8 yr old boys. Until one of them needs their shoes tied.
We easily win this game, ending after only four innings because of the mercy rule. The coach on the other team has a problem with it even though it is mathematically impossible for the other team to come back and win.
We have an hour and a half until our next game begins. Not enough time to go home and do anything so we all stay at the field. All of the kids scoff at the parents suggestions to sit down and rest. They run around and play. We decide that we all really need a drink. One of the mother’s makes a run to the liquor store.
8:30pm, the sun has set, the temperature has dropped, and final game begins.
None of us really think our team will win. The other team is like a well oiled machine. Before the game the other team is doing warm up exercises like they are a synchronized calisthenics team. Our team cannot even seem to understand “stand in a line.” They do their warm up exercises like a bunch of puppies on crack. Given the amount of candy we have all been feeding the kids, it may as well be.
Watching our undisciplined team, another mother and I laugh until we are crying. The parents on the other team even have organized team chants that they do in unison. Our team has none, other than “Go Phillies!” which doesn’t compare to them. We decide that whenever the other team parents chant we will steal their chant and say it for our team.
10:00 pm
Unbelievably, we win. The kids play the best game they have played in the six game series.
After the trophy ceremony we meet in the parking lot and the parents have our well deserved drink. Then I go home and have another. Because I really deserved it.
Yesterday was like I was living in dog years.
I took this photo seconds before Miles helmet flew off and he smacked his forehead into second base. Oh, how he cried. He has a big bump on his forehead. His explanation for what happened, “One of those polar bear players tripped me and I fell down!” The coaches all gathered around him and comforted him.
One of the other mothers said to me, “Aren’t you going to go out there and see if he is okay?”
I looked out onto the field. “No. I am sure he is fine.” Then I choked back the tears. Because I really REALLY wanted to run out there and scoop him up. But he didn’t need me.
He came into the dugout later with tear streaks on his filthy face, pulled his hair back off his forehead and showed everyone the bump on his forehead. After all his four year old friends were suitably impressed with his injury and bravery, he wrapped his arms around my legs, burying his face into my stomach.
He looked up at me, “Will you kiss it, Mommy?”
*****
My ten year old son was brought in to pitch the final inning. Everyone cheered. “Yea! It’s our closer!” About 10 minutes later the other team was cheering. “Yea! We won!”
*****
Then a couple of hours later it was like deja vu.
You know what the difference is though? A ten year old pitcher who screws up you want to hug and say, “Oh, it’s alright, sweetie. Everyone has a bad day. You will do better the next time.”
With a fourteen year old it is completely different. You want to smack him upside the head (after you ask him to bend down so you can REACH his head) and say, “What the hell was that?”
Of course you wish that you could still just kiss them and make it all better.
That is what my son said when he put his contacts in. Like it was something so shocking, so mysterious, this non-blurry vision thing. He sat in the doctor’s office and looked around, pointing out things across the room he could now see. I resisted the urge to tell him that if he actually WORE his glasses he would be able to see those same things also. But why quibble and spoil the moment.
Yes, my thirteen year old son got contacts this week. Yesterday it took him 45 minutes to get them in his eyes. I hope this improves, because I am not sure I have enough patience and encouraging words left in my reserves.
And what would any post be without the obligatory baseball photo.
I like this photo because you can see the ball coming in. He fouled this ball over the fence above where the coaches on the other team are standing.
My 8 yr old son’s baseball team continues to be crazy, in so many, many ways. I just never know what sort of excitement there will be when I head to the field on any given day.
He is playing in a tournament this weekend which means two games on Saturday and at least one on Sunday. He loves every single minute of it. Even when they practice for three hours he is still wishing he could practice MORE! Why does he have to stop? He doesn’t need to sleep! He is (more than) slightly obsessive.
Some things I have been writing when I haven’t been at the baseball field.
Over at Work It, Mom! I have a recipe up for fajitas. I have THE best fajita marinade recipe ever.
What about weekly family meetings? Do you need them as much as I do? Just so I can look at my kids and be like “Wow, you still live here?”
Do you do have any birthday traditions in your family?
Splurging in this bad economy, I know I am. And I have the ass to show for it. Maybe I should start playing baseball.
This is the first piece of furniture I have ever bought that didn’t require me to assemble it in some way. (Usually with one of those teeny tiny allen wrenches) Or come to me used. Not that there is anything wrong with used furniture, it is just that I have always settled for something that was okay for the moment, not something that I actually wanted. I feel like I bought my first grown-up furniture. Unfortunately, it also had a grown-up price tag.
Right before I moved here I got paid for some freelance work I had done. So the week I got here, I went out and bought a table big enough to fit all of us and ten chairs (We can have A FRIEND over for dinner now!), before I blew the money on other more frivolous things. Like food.
I had some post purchase anxiety, but almost two months of sitting on the floor to eat cured me of it.
The game the four year old and under team played last weekend had to end early. Too many kids were crying in the dugout that they were tired. Or hungry. Or didn’t want to play anymore.
Miles wasn’t crying. He was too busy laying in the infield playing with the dirt.
Or practicing his catching skills.
Or telling his team mates, “Good job, guys!”
Or trying to wrestle the ball out of the hands of his team mates.
Whenever the ball is hit the kids all run to it like moths to a flame. And then they tackle each other and run away with the ball. I think they are confusing the game with football.
Disclaimer: No one was injured in the making of this video.
You will want to watch this in full screen size so that you can see it clearly.
Miles is in the outfield behind and to the right of the kid at third base. You can see him laying down in the dirt.
Then you see another boy on his team to the left do some spinning ninja sort of moves. I did not know this at the time, but apparently the boy asked Miles if he wanted to “fight.” Miles does not know the meaning of “fight.” He does, however, know how to fight.
So what you see is the other boy doing some spinning and kicks in the air. Miles jumps up and does a spinning kick getting the boy in his stomach. And then he finishes him off by throwing the glove at his head.
It would probably be wrong for me to admit how hard we all laughed later in the evening when we were watching the video. Especially since Miles kept saying over and over, “He said he wanted to fight!”
This is 4yr old baseball at its best.
