Hanging In There

It's been a pretty laid back week since the big ER thing on Monday. Mike went back to work on Wednesday, even though he probably should have stayed home another day. We decided to skip TKD on Tuesday but the weather turned nice so the kids finally got to go outside to play for an extended period of time. Jacob and I have been out playing catch in the afternoons, trying to get him ready to go for baseball season. He's so excited.

After his last season, two years ago, we never thought he'd want to play again. His coach was mean and was very hard on the boys. He also only played the best kids on the team (which is completely against the rules...each boy may not sit more than one inning and Jacob was sitting two to three innings at a time) and the coach didn't seem to care about actually teaching the kids the fundamentals. I recently found out that most of the kids on that team jumped ship after that season and after another bad season last summer, that team no longer exists.

It's shocking how competitive how these teams are...and they're only in the 5th grade. Many teams cherry pick their teams so it makes it hard for the kids that like to play but aren't very good to get on a team with their classmates. When I signed Jacob up this year, I specifically said I wanted him on a low to mid level team (there are three levels) and preferably with his friend, Jett, who goes to a different school. I'm still not sure what team Jett landed on but the team Jacob did seems wonderful.

First of all, you have to love a team that starts the year off with a pizza party. That was tonight. There are three other boys from Jacob's school on this team, one from Jett's school, two from another school in our district and the rest are from a local parochial school. It seems that all have had really bad experiences in the past with coaches so they are very sensitive to that. Jacob also really likes his teammates (they all sat together and were talking and laughing during dinner) so I think this is going to be great for him. I just wasn't ready for the season to start so early. Formal practices don't start until the end of the month but batting practice starts on Sunday. Jacob can't wait. Since the season ends at the beginning of July, it's going to be a long season.

Hannah starts soccer in three weeks. *Sigh*