Baseball

A season of baseball over. And here are....the 8 year old champion Cardinals. The championship game was on Tuesday. It was so fun and exciting! I didn't know I would get so stressed out watching my kids play sports....at least not already by the age of 8. My heart pounds and I have to cover my eyes once in awhile. This season has been full of ups and downs for us. We go back and forth between yanking Noah right out of baseball, and knowing it's good for him and he's learning lessons he couldn't learn any other way. (He's just having a harder time learning those lessons than most it seems). His coach described him last night at "intense", so I'll go with that. But really, Noah has improved SOOOOO much from the start of the season. Baseball is so big out here and everyone always seems to have so much experience. And it's hard when you move around and get started later than everyone else. They always do all sorts of intense camps and things, too, and I have been way too cheap for that. Anyway, it's actually been very fun to watch the games at this age (as long as Noah is being happy). I remember back in the day when we tried T-ball and he just played in the dirt and looked for plants and bugs. Now they understand the rules and it just gets really fun. He had a great encouraging coach (who reminds me SO much of my brother in law!), and great teammates. And it's become actually fun to play catch with him, instead of frustrating like it was in the beginning. (I always ended up being the frustrated wonderful example of a mom who just refuses to play anymore--but really I only remember playing catch as being FUN)

That's my son with no hat and shirt untucked. Both a constant battle during the season. I wonder why? He also always walked around with his shoes untied, but not in baseball so I should count my blessings.