Moms of Boys

Today was my youngest son’s (just turned 7) first day of baseball practice. He’s done basketball, soccer, and ice hockey, but he’s never played on a baseball team because all the teams for his age were Tee Ball, which meant he’d have to hit the ball off a tee. With my older boys, now 16 and 13, I never was much of a fan of tee-ball when they played. Even the good hitters sometimes found it difficult to hit off that stupid tee, and would often knock the tee itself over. Much less boring to be pitched to by a coach or a pitching machine and much more fun to watch. Jason, my youngest, had been pitched to by his older brother, David, 13, for years, and he would hate to have to return to hitting from a tee.

But this team is real baseball with pitching just like Jason has been dreaming about. He was so excited that practices finally started! He wanted to dress just like his big brother — in full uniform including an athletic cup! I told him that wasn’t necessary, but he wanted to be like David. So, he wore the brand new cup for the first time. Looked like he found it a bit difficult to run in. It is now, of course, on my coffee table in the family room.

My boys are all really busy now and so are my husband and I. David has already started school because he is in year-round — he’s in the 8th grade. Billy and Jason are on the traditional calendar school so they start in two weeks. In the meantime, Billy has had football practice about every day all summer, and he just completed his Eagle Scout project. He’s also working on summer homework (glad this didn’t exist when I was in school!) for some AP classes. David is playing AAU baseball and working on lots of school work. Jason is doing the baseball league (they don’t keep score - wink, wink) and then will have choir on Wednesdays. He likes to sing much more than my other two boys.

In mid-July, our family went to Cooperstown, NY to see David’s team compete in a tournament up there. Ended up coming in 3rd out of 10 — David hit 3 homeruns and had a good tourney overall. Of course, we drove our camper up from NC. David stayed in some dorms with his team, but the rest of us -including our dog– stayed in our camper. We just got a flat screen TV in it so that’s made ‘camping’ a little more bearable for me.

Anyway, the upstate NY area was beautiful! So much less humid than NC. Really liked Cooperstown — such a picturesque town with a village atmosphere. Lots of sports shops where the guys all bought stuff. Lots of restaurants, which we didn’t go in because — we had our dog with us (don’t ask).
Before going to NY, we drove up to Niagara Falls for two days and stayed on the Canadian side. Lots of fun and absolutely breathtaking. If you’ve never been, go. The Canadian side has many more commercial offerings and high rise hotels and such (which of course we did not stay in, despite pleas from my 16 year old — and okay from me — for us to abandon the camper for a night). The Maid of the Mist boat ride was really nice. You see, by adding this little side trip to the Falls, I was attempting to balance the sport-affiliated content of our vacation. A feeble attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.

Hope you all have had a great summer!

Sharon