Shuwing Battah

For the record:

Two grueling nights of training with the skating club.

3hrs of skating today while I had my winter tires removed.

One month NO SMOKING and
NO PROBLEM.

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Invited Omar's dad for supper tonight, then sent them out to practice Baseball before we all enjoyed a Spring Fling party at Omar's school. What an awesome party!!

Lil' grunt has his VERY first practice of the season Monday night and I am VERY proud to say that his natural atheltic ability is SHINING through in this sport. That kid has a swing like I've never seen before in my life. I swear I got tears in my eyes and had to take a moment before I GUSHED all over him with praise. Now, I KNOW you're not "suppose" to play Baseball in the house, but that's someone ELSE'S house, not MINE. In MY house Baseball is perfectly acceptable and WAS until he hit the plastic hockey ball into the cast iron candelobra of lights and then into the kitchen from the front hall knocking over my coffee. (*beaming* It was SO very impressive - you should have seen his face light up and heard him giggling)....*BIG SIGH* Gawd I love being a mom.

In the garage we had this LARGE cardboard tube from IKEA (and it IS pronounced IKEE-YA not IKAA-YA) that the kids would use to walk/balance and play on....anyhoo...I sawed it at the appropriately measured height creating a T-ball stand. Upon this I put a rather LARGE child's ball (the kind that come out in spring that are really soft). This was PART 2 of our practice only after I nailed down the following with him in front of a large mirror so he could watch himself:

• player intimidation; syking out the other team (hey, it's part of the game - eat or be eatten I say)
• owning the field
• addressing the plate
• proper bat distance, hand placement, alignment etc
• body positioning (lazer beam hips - very technical stuff ;-) amoungst many other mommy secret hints passed down by MY mother and the woman who just happens to have been MY baseball coach 8-) when I was a kid)
• stance, knee bend, elbows, torque, follow through etc etc etc

All this with thee message of all messages "above ALL, having FUN and be a GOOD SPORT...." were covered before his first under hand pitch. Casting aside the homemade "T" stand, I send my very first pitch to the boy - who line drives it right back to me!!!!! I pitch again, he hits high and to the left. Then a grounder - this kid is HOT!!! I stop and hug him! I LOVE THIS KID!!!! We're having so much fun - he has this HUGE smile on his face and we've found a sport that involves team play with individual attention. Soccer just wasn't his thing. He would avoid contact - it messed him up to get into skirmishes because there are girls on the team and he knows how important it is to be gentle with girls.

We finished our Baseball tutoring night after using all the metal figurines from the Sponge Bob Monopoly game to review different play scenarios and having me putting the little dude on my shoulders cheering his "Home Run".

I'm remembering how easily he took to biking (almost as easy as indoor rock climbing). The training wheels got raised and one day while trying out bikes at Canadian Tire with his dad, he mounted a two-wheeler all by himself and took off around the store isles!! "Rocker Dad" (his dad is a musician recording artist guy and according to our son he is a "Rock Star" - even if he didn't get the lead for the lead singer for INXS....but that's another story) had to pick his jaw up off the ground!

I hope he derives as much enjoyment playing baseball as I did when I was a kid.