Practice Practice Practice

This week in baseball news…Luca fell off the stands on his head.  But it was one of those slow, controlled falls so he only screamed for 5 minutes.

Elijah, on the other hand, continued his strikeout streak at the plate.  But, man, is he good looking.  He was the only kid on either team who needed the coach to help him hit after 25 strikes. 

As Eli whiffed over and over, I began to hear snickering from the outfield.  A couple future fraternity social chairmen were making fun of my son’s struggles at the plate.  I spent a couple minutes giving them an elaborate explanation of why they were destined for a life of mediocrity.  In my head.  I began with their dumb, slack-jawed expressions and my crescendo was a detailed expose into their mother’s relations with barnyard animals.

I felt better. 

When we got home, I asked Eli if he was embarrassed that he was the only kid who couldn’t hit.

“A little bit.”

I explained that the only, and I mean only, way he would get better at hitting would be to practice.  Every day.  No matter what. 

He immediately opted to just keep striking out.

I tried again.  If he practiced batting every day, he would receive a Skylanders guy.  But if he practiced every day and got a hit in a game without a coach’s intervention, he would receive a new Skylanders game.  This was a $40 value.

He began trying to bargain his way down to two days a week or three swings a day but I said, “Pap pap pap pap.  This is not negotiable.  Take it or leave it.”

The only wrinkle was who would throw him easy to hit pitches when I was at work?  Who could master the can of corn? 

On Sunday, I put Diana on the mound.  She has an ERA of 124, so I figured Eli would light her up.  But Eli hadn’t anticipated her secret weapon:  the wild pitch.  She threw it over his head, at his head, and over the garage.  After ten or so pitches into the bushes, I sent her to the showers.

The neighbor girl seemed only to be able to throw, as Eli calls it, “Crotch Balls.”

Our Ace is babysitter Hannah.  She has the temperament, the hours of free time with the boy and just enough throwing ability to get it over the plate.  Eli reported yesterday that he hit five of her throws. 

Watch out, Team Jimmy Johns!

Pee Pee Free

It is with a heavy heart that I announce Elijah no longer wears diapers.  Not even at night.  He’s completely dry every night.  And it saddens me. 

Not because it’s yet another sign my baby is growing up and will eventually leave me forever.  It’s because wet pants/shorts/couches/beds/floors/church pews/airline seats were such an easy blog story.  If it was a slow week for embarrassment, I could always wring out a story about Eli soaking something.  But now it’s all dried up.  I’m here all week.

I’m not sure when he made the transition to no diapers officially.  I think it was when Diana offered him $1 for every night he went without wetting the bed.  I think we’ve racked up a few hundred dollars in pee pee fees.  But like his college tuition, we aren’t going to pay up a dime.

I’ll admit, I miss it.  The smell.  The coldness.  The wetness. 

But we still have Luca, who is still good for a wet diaper a few nights a week.  But a wet diaper makes Luca an angry, angry boy.  The other night, he came storming into our room and began shouting at Diana, “Change my diaper!  Change my diaper!”

While I pretended to sleep, he continued shouting at her, “This is all your fault!  YOU made me have a wet diaper!”

When Diana tried to explain that if he went pee pee before he went to bed instead of drinking a gallon of water before going to bed, he wouldn’t have this problem.

He shouted, “Idiot!”

I laughed into my pillow so as not to encourage him.  But really?  Idiot?  Who calls people idiots?  Let alone call their mom an idiot?

I hope we’ll have at least a few more pee stories before this is all over.

First Baseball Game.

I love Elijah.  Despite never actually catching or hitting a baseball in his life, he decided to join the little league team.  They are sponsored by a local dentist and despite their coaches suggestion they be called “The Drillers,” I think the kids are going with “The Cavities” or “The Yuck Mouths.”

For reasons unknown to me, The Yuck Mouths only had one practice before their first game.  Which was fine by Eli, but filled me with an icy cold stomach full of panic.  I asked him if he caught any balls or got any hits in practice and he happily chirped, “Nope!”

On Saturday, game day, Eli opted not to wear the issued white uniform pants and wore black instead.  I tried to explain the importance of blending in when you aren’t the greatest player on the team, but he didn’t want to get his new white pants dirty.

As the kids warmed up, I felt all of my parenting failures on display as Eli chased missed ball after missed ball.  But then I opened my aperture a bit and realized all the kids sucked.  Sure, there were a few future prom kings who were fielding like Pee Wee Reese (thank you Google), but by and large all the kids were scrambling around like a box full of puppies.

I began to relax.  The coach shouted to me with an evil grin, “I’m going to put Eli at first base!”

I shouted back, “Go nuts!”

Eli’s experience at first wasn’t terrific.  He had a few balls chucked at him that went into right field, but the general play of the 7 year olds was so 7 year oldie that no one seemed to notice.

Then it was his turn to bat.  It dawned on me that this was no three strikes and you are out league.  This was a swing until you connected league. 

The coach gingerly tossed ball after ball to Eli.  Broad sides of barns were missed.  The air around his bat seemed to taunt him.

Sweat began to trickle from my armpits and I suddenly for very interested in my iphone.  I clenched my eyes, pretending to really need to see what my brother sitting next to be was doing on Facebook.

Then I heard a cheer.  I looked up to see Eli running to first base.  My boy got a hit!  My boy got a hit!

He eventually made it home, scoring his first goal/point/run of his life.  He ran to me in the stands and I told him I loved him.

Then I told him he should probably go back and sit with the team in the dugout. 

Birthday Bowling

The day started off with a trip to Wal-Mart to buy Elijah a new bike.  I lobbied to get him a $1700 carbon fiber triathlon racing monster, but we opted for something that didn’t reflect my own penis insecurities.

I’d love to take the time to crap all over Wal-Mart, but the place was clean, didn’t smell of dead things and the people were nice.  So there, everyone on the internet.

I worried a bit that Elijah would pick out a weirdo bike.  Because he’s a weirdo.  I overplayed my hand a bit my shouting, “Ooh!  That bike looks like a motorcycle!  And doesn’t have pictures of ponies!”

He picked out a really cool blue number that had those little BMX metal pegs on the side of the wheels for tricks and for removing skin from your dad’s shins.  After the very nice Wal-Mart guy hoisted the bike down, I noticed a few of the parts were pretty loose.  I could see an empty tool box and a full swear jar in my future.

A few hours later we arrived at the Skokie Bowling Alley.  We invited Di’s family, Steve’s family and our neighbors and Kitty.  All of whom didn’t seem to care Eli’s birthday party was on Easter Sunday.

All of the other bowling attendees also didn’t seem to care it was Easter Sunday.  We were the only non Hasidic Jewish people there.  But man, they can roll.

You know who else can roll?  Diana.  She destroyed me.  Bam bam bam.  She killed those poor little pins. 

Manhood, destroyed, I focused on the kid alley.  Whoever invented bumper bowling deserves a medal.  The little guys and gals had a blast, and with the elimination of gutter balls, they racked up the scores until they got bored and went to the game area.

A quick note on the game area.  Cousin Finn, that beautiful timid boy, hit the jackpot on some game and got 1,000 prize tickets.  He did not take my suggestion to turn them in for 1,000 erasers.

As I said in the last post, the pizza gorging on top of a firm bed of jelly beans ended up being too much for Eli and he barfed all over the place when we got home.

But I believe there is no better indicator of birthday success.

Easter 2014

The night before Easter, I attempted to shed a small amount of light on the religious meaning behind the eggs.  Luca asked, “Who is Jesus again?”  I gotta get those guys to church. 

The boys and their cousins dyed eggs and smashed two on the floor.  In their defense, my brother smashed one as well.  I yelled at him as a surrogate for the kids. 

They wanted to know how the Easter Bunny got into the house.  I told him he used the same techniques as Santa, but also had the power of teleportation for houses without chimneys.  The debate that raged after wasn’t whether or not a giant candy toting rabbit could exist, but whether or not teleportation was real.

Elijah wrote a note to the Easter bunny requesting an outside egg hunt.  I informed him that the Easter Bunny didn’t do outside hunts because it was going to be cold that night and he didn’t want to schlep all over the yard, getting his Vans all muddy.

However, a few hours later our extremely nice neighbor Lexa came by with bag full of eggs for an outside hunt.  She had the brilliant plan to assign each of her kids and our kids an official color of egg they would be responsible for.  This eliminated the “Hunger Games” affect.  So the Easter Bunny soaked his Vans.

The next morning, on cue, the boys awoke at 6:30am.  But the Easter Bunny got smart this year and left them both video games.  So they raced downstairs to play until the much less stupid hour of 8:30am for our official hunt.

So much candy.  So very much candy.  Each child had a mouth full of jelly beans/Peeps/M&Ms for the entire day.  What could go wrong with that?

Before the barf story begins, have you ever microwaved a Peep?  Eli heard talk of it over at the neighbor’s and demonstrated it to us with one unfortunate pink Peep test subject.  The results were Cronenberg-esc to say the least.  Guess who got to clean that up?

Anyway, the day ended with Eli’s bowling birthday party (I’ll get to that later this week) and he came home complaining of a vague stomach ache.  My accusations that he had eaten too much candy were met with a gallon of brightly colored vomit into our large green mixing bowl. 

It was if Eli wanted to create his own homemade Easter treat inside half a plastic shell.  I would have taken a picture if it weren’t the grossest thing ever.