T-ball Season

This year, Stephanie was too old for T-ball (ages 4-6) and had to choose between track and softball. She selected track (more on that at a later date), but I saw that T-ball was for children that were 4 as of April. Bingo! I have one of those! I know some parents get sick of their kids activities (and there are days that I do), but I love to have the kids participate in our local Parks and Rec. It is inexpensive, well run, and most nights it beats the pants off of crazy children wrecking the house. I was also super excited that Gwen FINALLY gets to do a sport. I have been dragging her to all of Stephanie's for years, and she was so happy to get signed up. And then I went to sign her up... Should have read more carefully- 4 by April 1st... so we missed that cutoff by 22 days. I know that the parks and rec are flexible when you sign up in person, so I took it upon myself to go ahead and adjust her birthday in the system, only the system wouldn't let me. So I did what any reasonably desperate mother would do not have to tell her baby that she couldn't play t-ball (or drive into town and deal with it in person-it isn't the 19th century, after all)- I started an account for Kevin and moved her birthday by 23 days to March 31st. And Voila! Now I have a little T-baller. I also convinced a mom friend that has a son in Stephanie's class to sign up for our team, but only one of her sons wanted to play- so now I have Gwen on a team, a mom I like to talk to and a play date for Stephanie twice a week at the ball park.

First Practice- See how happy she is!

Let's call the rest of the pictures as being from the first game (the first game that I successfully remembered both a camera and a memory card for said camera, in other words).

Here she is throwing her glove while in the field. I unfortunately missed the picture of her wearing it on her head. BUT she does all of this while mostly facing the batter, which is slightly better than Stephanie managed sometimes. 

Look who brought Buzzy Bee out to the field. 

That's Coach Pete. He is awesome. He coaches the high school boys at our county high school (his grandson is on the t-ball team), and recruited four high school boys to coach with him, so there is an army to manage these kids. I have grown to love high schoolers this year anyway, and I especially love that these boys give up one night a week and Saturday mornings for these little kids. 

I also should mention that at the actual first game, she was the kid that ran to third after hitting the ball. But she has mostly worked out the running to first since. This game (the second) she actually got her hands on the ball three times in the field and got it to where it needed to be. Her third game was today. She didn't get to field the ball, but she played third in the second inning. After the first batter hit the ball, she ran home and then headed to the dug-out. The high schooler that was in her area of the field did all the calling her back that he could have possibly have done, but she was not to be dissuaded from an opportunity to score. Fortunately, Coach Pete shooed her back to her position before she quite made it to the dugout. She is so little and cute and the total comic relief of the game.

And then, of course, there is Stephanie. I was testing some camera settings and asked Stephanie to run towards me. My camera settings didn't work as I had planned (need to check out my old friend YouTube to figure it out), but I still got some funny pictures.

The T-Ball adventures will continue into June. In addition to teaching them a little about baseball, Coach Pete has tried to instill two things in the kids- #1- The Cubs are the best and #2- have fun. She has #2 down perfectly!

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