Austin's First T-Ball Season, 2014

Austin is having a busy, full, well-rounded spring/summer! He's been in dance class all year at PowerHouse (the Creative Movement class for 2 and 3 year olds) and recently had his recital. He was also recently in soccer at The Y. And now he's in T-Ball. Signing him up for T-Ball was a pretty easy decision because it's with the same team (and hence same uniform) he played soccer with. That's a lot of savings for us, so we went for it. We also felt like the less-confrontation-ness of T-Ball would be good for his sweet disposition. And, well, it's been a journey so far!

The first game was just Austin, Graham, and I (635 was a traffic mess that night and Seth was over an hour late getting home). I was parenting both while trying to explain to Austin how to play and needed to run bases with him while holding Graham. I think I shaved at least a year off my life during that game. (never-doing-that-again) But Austin was SO excited to play. He got the ball several times, he hit well, etc. Since that first game, he's not been excited to play and actually says he doesn't want to. (I think it might be a combination of one of the dads is a little scary/intimidating and he's always chosen last in the batting order, etc. Definitely not all-things-equal on this team of people who all know each other except us.) There's been a lot of bribing and encouraging going on which I wish wasn't necessary. But, we have resolved to stick it out since we paid for it.

Austin's first game; he was so excited!

Here are some pictures from one of his games after he was not-so-thrilled to play anymore.

Seth's teaching him how to stand while playing the field.

He loves to just stomp/plop down on the base as hard as he can.

Our last game and award ceremony:

The opening code recital...

Seth was trying to teach him how to stand.

But this is how he looked most of the time. 

Always a good hitter, though!

Look at him hustle! 

They started moving them around and Austin got a chance to actually field the ball!

Two Grahams

He is so proud of that thing!

I guess Graham wanted another popsicle! 

my sweet baby...

yum!

Next year, he'll be older and can choose between Soccer OR T-Ball. Or neither if he doesn't want to play either of them. But I don't think we'll let him play both. We just felt that he wouldn't know if he was interested until we signed him up; we didn't want to wait for him to request participation. (Here's a blog post that explains pretty much exactly how I feel.) And with two fall birthdays and my love of all things fall-namely, sitting around watching college football on tv and generally being relaxed, our falls are too busy to add sports of any kind, so the spring will be the only season we will pursue sports during. At least until they request otherwise and are old enough that it matters.