I think I pretty much left my “four times a week” blog posting goal in its death throes several weeks ago. When I checked in today I noticed a little bit of life around its blue tinged blog lips, so I will march on and hope for better consistency in the future.
Today N had a Little League game. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the suburbs, though our team’s bats fell silent. In our league, all of the teams take the name of a professional team. We are the Mets and today we played the Phillies. I think, perhaps, we played the *real* Phillies…judging by the “slaughter”, as a fellow mom put it. Some on the opposing team had tell-tale 5 o’clock shadow by 3pm and arm tattooes of their wives and girlfriends, for crying out loud. Smelled like a scandal of the Chinese “women’s” gymnastics team variety, though the opposite problem of ringers pretending to be Little Leaguers. 🙂 I’m just sayin’.
N continues to love baseball. He enjoys it while he’s riding the pine, standing in the outfield, running to first on a hard-won hit…and also when he plays third base and, let’s say, a teammate throws him the ball while he’s not even paying attention. Hypothetically speaking, that ball might have just sailed right on by while teammates and coaches shouted N’s name, to no avail I might add. One might think that type of thing would be a wake-up call, but one would be so wrong! On one of the next plays the batter, looking suspiciously like Ryan Howard, smacked one toward third base and an oblivious N just stood there in the glorious sunshine. At least he was somewhat at the ready! He later shared that he had his hat pulled down so far, and he was squinting so hard, that he really couldn’t see much of anything. Oh well, can’t win them all… And they didn’t. 16-0 is a rumor I heard.
I’m really happy at the balance the team has found. Many of the players are terrific and they get plenty of playing time. There are also those who struggle, and they get to play too. The coaches are wonderful and committed, and most importantly N still loves the game. I enjoyed a comment one of the coaches made to the team during the postmortem. He complimented them on their excellent strategy of saving up all of their hits for tomorrow’s game and encouraged them all to bring those hits next time. Then the snacks and drinks were distributed and everyone adjourned until tomorrow.
We then proceeded to the grocery store, together with sock puppets. Now N is playing computer chess in the office while E is setting booby traps in the kitchen for Jeff and creating a Kitty Playland for the cats. Earlier E glued some sticks he gathered at the ballpark into a sword. These are the times the boys really shine. 🙂

Kittyland was cool, but the real goal, the booby trap for Jeff, was exquisite. It was taken apart due to safety issues.
Jeff is awesome, btw. He wanted me to write something about how awesome he is. He’s cooking dinner. That’s pretty awesome, indeed. Agreed?
sarah ziegler said,
May 23, 2010 at 7:22 am
agreed, jeff is pretty awesome for cooking. i love when my jeff cooks. nice post, I could totally picture the game. That picture of N with his hat down seems SO Nish to me. Cute.