4th 2013

Remember last year when at the spur of the moment Steve and I decided to take our sons to Evanston beach to watch the fireworks?

Me neither.

But it left a real impression on our sons.  In their minds, it is our official 4^th of July tradition.  New to me.  But Elijah and Finn built it up to epic proportions.  They simply HAD to go to the beach this year.

Fine by me.  But there was a small wrinkle.  We weren’t going to be in Evanston this year.  We decided to visit Diana’s family in the Western suburbs, a good, non holiday hour a way.  But Diana and Elijah weren’t sweating it.  They assumed we’d make it back in plenty of time before dark to see the fireworks.

Not me.  I ain’t wired that way.  In a classic Rick Hamann neurosis attack, I was sure we wouldn’t make it back in time.  This panic hit me well before the fireworks were set to launch.

“Guys, let’s finish up our burgers.  If we leave now, we’ll just make it back in time to hit the beach, give or take 9 hours.  Guys?  Guys?  Let’s put our plates down.”

I nervously cracked my knuckles while the rest of my normal family frolicked in the pool, chatted and strolled through a nearby carnival through the afternoon.

Much later, when the clock stuck 6, I calculated 2 hours to make it.  I ruined a perfectly good cookout dinner declaring if were even going to have remote chance of making it, we had to leave, like, right now.

Eli supported me, mostly because he was finished eating.

After a harrowing drive home, we made it to Evanston with an hour to spare.  We drove towards the beach and as soon as it even remotely became congested, I threw open the car door and forced Elijah to dive roll out so we could walk the rest of the way.

I dragged him to the beach so swiftly he complained of side stitch.  But we made it, and met my brother in plenty of time.

We waded our way through the crush of humanity and found a perfect spot.  Elijah and Finn were incredibly spazzy and amped up in anticipation of the fireworks, so I felt 1% vindicated for my craziness.

The sun set and the glow stick salesmen were out in force.  To make up for my pushiness, I bought the kids each one.  Eli’s burned out immediately and Finn traded sticks out of kindness.

Finally, finally the first firework exploded in the Evanston night sky.  Elijah turned to me and said, “I have to go to the bathroom.  It’s an emergency.”

“What?  If we walk to the bathroom, we’ll miss the fireworks.”

“It’s an emergency!”

I sighed and lead him through, over and under the crowd.  We visited the bathroom and listened to the rockets red glare.

Truthfully, we made it back in plenty of time to see the show.  And I think it was worth it.

Baseball Update

If you scroll down to old posts, you’ll know that I’ve been waking up at 6:30am to practice baseball catching with Elijah every morning.

Kind of.  Sort of.  For two days, at least.

Last Saturday morning, I shook Eli awake and gave him the “let’s go toss a rolled up sock in the basement” pantomime.  It’s a pretty complicated pantomime. 

He rolled over, all mop topped and sleepy and said, “Dada.  I thought we could make baseball practice a weekday thing and take the weekend off.”  I should have flipped him off his bed right then and there and dragged him downstairs.  But at 6:30am it seemed like the greatest logic in the world.  So I let him sleep.

Then came Monday morning.  I awoke to Eli shaking me this time.  He whispered, “Dada, let’s go play baseball.”  Oh no.  I had an 8am meeting.  Which thankfully my son woke me up for.  But at the expense of our agreed upon baseball practice.

“Ooh, sorry man.  Dada has to go to work.  We’ll have to do it tomorrow.”  If you think the look on his face would be disappointment, you don’t know Eli.  He bounded back to his bed and crawled in for part two of sleep.

But I couldn’t let this go on.  I couldn’t let our baseball practice end.  That child had to learn how to catch.  And I had to teach him.  It was a promise.  And if I go back on this promise, how many other promises would I go back on for the rest of my life?

So I forced our nanny Hannah to do it.  Elijah now has baseball catching practice every day with Hannah while Luca takes his nap.  Which is supplemented by my baseball practice in the mornings when Elijah’s incredibly brilliant arguments not to practice don’t work.

In other news, Diana suggested Eli take guitar lessons.  Just in case this whole baseball thing doesn’t work out.

Eye Hand Help

One of my favorite all time Homer Simpson quotes is, “If something is hard to do than it’s not worth doing.  You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle and we'll go inside and watch TV.”

I desperately don’t want Elijah’s desire to learn how to catch a ball to go the way of Bart Simpson’s short wave radio.  So I was determined to get that boy back on the mound this morning.

But yesterday’s session, while good emotionally, was not very successful skills wise. Every time I threw the whiffle ball to Eli, it bounced off him like there was an anti-whiffle ball force field surrounding him.  Oh, this would be so much easier if he was suddenly interested in sci-fi.

I blamed myself.  I was clearly not teaching him the proper fundamentals.   So I turned to the internet for solutions.  If only he was suddenly interested in searching for things on the internet.

Luckily, I found a video fairly quickly that featured a an uber jock dad who outlined step by step how to teach a child who is ball averse to catch.  I was immediately impressed with the fact that he never once made fun of me or my son in the video.  And equally impressed that his golf visor matched his Under Armour high tech wicking shirt and impossibly great coaching shorts.

His technique involved having the eye/hand impaired simply hold their hand out in front of them in a Supremes’ “Stop in the Name of Love” gesture.  Then toss balls at the outstretched target until the kid gets used to having a ball connect with a palm.  Then move on to catching said ball.  Then move on to the suicide squeeze play.

I sprung out of bed this morning at 6:30am sharp to try out my new training.  The only problem?  Eli did not want to get out of bed.  I shook his shoulder.  I poked him.  I loudly whispered, “Wakey wakey eggs and bacey in his face.”  Nothing.

Luca, on the other hand, woke up immediately and ran into our room to torture Diana. 

Finally, Elijah stirred.  Butt first.  Then he exited his top bunk butt first, slid down the stairs butt first and slowly put his shoes on.  Butt first.

After informing him that regardless of when training began, it had to end at 7 so I could get ready for work, he stood sleepily on our tiny patch of lawn.  I had him give me the stop sign and began tossing balls at him. 

The result?  Better.  I’ll admit my skills at throwing the ball to his outstretched hand needs almost as much work as his catching skills.

But we’re getting there.  

Training

I’ve been working a little crazily lately (hence the lack of posts) and got home last night right when the boys were headed to bed.  Thankfully, I was able to give them each a wet kiss they hated with white hot fury.  Too bad.

Moments later I was chatting with Diana when she looked at me in the eye and said, “You HAVE to teach Eli to catch.”

It appears that one of the kids from the neighborhood has been making fun of Elijah for his lack of skills.  I guess he accidentally threw a baseball into our neighbor’s yard and while Diana helped them recover it, this nameless child said, “Eli is weak.”  When Diana demanded to know what he meant, he said, “He’s just…weak.”

And then after some ill fated at bats down the street, he came home and glumly said, “I’m the worst at sports ever.”

My heart shattered into a billion pieces.  I had failed in my one and only job as a dad: Teaching him to be a major league short stop.  Granted, Eli’s aversion to any and all requests to play sports had, until that moment, been well documented.  But momentum just swung in sport’s direction like that game where they hit the black disk thingy on ice.

I ran up to the boy’s room and grabbed Eli in a hug and whispered in his ear, “Do you want to learn how to catch a ball?”

Luca called from below, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!”

Elijah whispered back, “Yes.”

I told him my schedule doesn’t allow for sunset games of catch at the end of a fictional cul de sac.  But if we was serious about learning how to play catch, I would wake up at 6:30 every morning and teach him how to catch for a half hour every single day until he was good enough to make the nameless neighbor kid feel like never picking up a bat or ball ever again.  Eli breathlessly agreed.

Luca said, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!”

I said, “What, Luca?  What?”

“I found my fire truck ladder.”

“That’s great, honey.”

As if on cue, Mother Nature sucker punched us with a terrible summer storm.  All night, Grover stuck his face in my face, panting to let me know the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning.

It was still pouring at 6:30am when Eli tip toed in and said glumly, “I guess we can’t play catch, huh?”

I said, “We are going to play catch, Eli.  I promised you we would.”  And so we went to our basement with two whiffle balls and put our time in.  Eli was determined, if rarely successful.  I think he nabbed one out of every 30 balls thrown.  But he didn’t let it get him down and actually concentrated on keeping his eye on the ball.

We agreed to do the same thing tomorrow and every day after.

Kansas City

Diana and I went down to Missouri last weekend to attend the completely kick ass wedding of our pals Kitty and Joe.  It was our first weekend away from the boys in a very long time and drank up every moment without those two screaming knuckleheads like the Budweiser in a can so graciously supplied by our hosts.

Or did we?

We missed them far more than I thought we would.  I had to allow myself one and one only call to check on them per day.  But unlimited text messages.  But I found Diana and my party conversation could always make it’s way back to Elijah and Luca.

Oh yeah, the Royals are playing the White Sox.  Do who hates baseball?  Elijah.

Yeah, that dude who leaked all the NSA data.  Do you know who can’t spell “NSA?”  Luca.

September 11th?  Eli, Luca, Eli, Luca, Eli, Luca.

When I would ask them how things were going they would respond the same way every time.  “I can’t remember what we did today.  Can I talk to mom?”

Completely understandable.  I would hand the phone over and they would weep openly about how much they missed her and have competitions on who missed her more, often getting into fights over it.

My dad and Connie would then give me the lowdown on how many gallons of water they spent playing water gun fights and what good eaters they are and generally behave like the best grandparents ever.

And then I’d go back to pretending to listen to non Luca and Eli based conversations.