Baseball

I have always loved baseball.

My husband has always loved the game as well.

Secretly, I have been in great anticipation of Bug growing old enough to play the game. Last year, he was too young for T-ball so we registered him for Soccer. He hated it!

In fact, during one game, it was his turn to kick the ball into play and instead of kicking it, he sat down on it and took a break.

But, he maintained that he wanted to play baseball and so my hopes stayed high.

This year, he was old enough to register in the instructional league. The first night of practice, we suited him up, bagged his equipment and headed for the dugout.

Our boy ran onto the field a five year old, he came home……well – older.

He drank in the game. Everything the coach did, Bug did right down to mimicking the coach’s stance during the pep talks.

Upon returning home, Bug announced that he was now a big boy and no longer wanted to eat off Disney character plates or drink out of sippy cups. He needs to use grown-up everything.

I never would have thought the game would have had such an impact. It was neat to watch. And, he shows promise for the game as he’s a pretty good hitter. All we have to do now is teach him how to run to the right base.

Potty Training

A while back, I wrote a post concerning my fear of potty training. Click here to read the story of why I fear potty training.

Well, you can only avoid the inevitable for so long. And so, we began potty training Squeaker two weeks ago.

The good news is, she did remarkably well and what I thought would be a nightmare turned out to be not so bad. But, as I’ve always heard regarding beginning potty trainers, you have good days and bad days.

This past Sunday was our first BAD day.

After church, a group of us went to Mojo’s BBQ restaurant for lunch. The place was packed. Squeaker has decided that 80% of the fun of being potty trained is the treks to the bathroom. We hadn’t been at the restaurant very long when the journeys began.

The problem….she wouldn’t “go”. We took her three times and she wouldn’t “go”.

Squeaker would get into position and then start playing a game with the toilet paper dispenser and the door. She would introduce the two inanimate objects as if they were sitting down to tea and then carry on conversations with them. Meanwhile, my BBQ is getting cold!

I finally get Squeaker back to our table. She climbs in her chair. I am about to sit down when the loudest scream I have ever heard in my life penetrates the atmosphere of the restaurant. Turning, I see Squeaker standing in her chair with pee free flowing down her legs, pooling in her chair and waterfalling into the floor.

Her screams were so loud that taking her to the bathroom across the entire length of restaurant was not an option. Instead, I scooped her up and headed out the door five feet away.

Standing outside, sobbing incessantly, Squeaker looks at me and says, “You didn’t listen to me.”

Didn’t listen to you?

She repeats, “You didn’t listen to me, I said I had to go potty.”

“I listened to you three times, why didn’t you go then?” Is the response that rushed out of my mouth.

But, my daughter mortified, I consoled her and took her to the car to change into fresh clothes. At least I had thought far enough ahead to bring those.

So, hopefully that will be the worst of our potty training days. However, as this is posted we will be at Disney world mapping out every bathroom in the park. Oh, the adventure…..

Have a great weekend.

Don't Hurt the Socks Feelings!

When I was a child, I often assigned emotions to inanimate objects. For instance, my stuffed animals (and there were a lot) carried a multitude of emotions that led to imagined stories of plush toy kingdoms and teddy bear adventures. I cried with them when they were sad, and nurtured them when they were hurt. I cuddled them when they were scared, laughed when they were happy, and threw fantasy parties on imagined birthdays, which in teddy bear land arrived more than once a year.

But, the emotional attachment to inanimate objects went much farther than that. Example….passing through double doors at stores was a terrible conundrum for me. You see, it’s very difficult to walk through both doors. You have to pick one, but if you pick just one than the other one is left out. If I could pull it off without my parents invading my secret word, I would walk through one door, and then walk back through the other door, and then rewalk through the other door. That way, every door was used and therefore appreciated. More often, however, my parents did not indulge me, and I secretly whispered apologies to the unused door while being dragged away.

This avenue of my imagination came to a dead end during the preteen years, and was all but forgotten until I caught our son doing something……well, very imaginative.
Our son is a Thomas the Tank Engine fanatic. One could even say he is train obsessed as he (at 5) could guide you through any train museum and explain every engine top-to-bottom in the yard.

This past Christmas, I was thrilled to find Thomas the Tank Engine socks. The small treasure came in a set of two socks.

One pair of Thomas socks and one pair of Percy socks.

For some reason, I kept finding these socks mismatched in the dirty clothes. They were paired as follows:



After a few washings, I started thinking that maybe Bug is doing this on purpose, so I asked him.
“Mom” he said, “Thomas and Percy are friends. They will be sad if I separate them.”




Enter a flood of memories from my own childhood. Ahh, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Now, I mismatch the socks on purpose. I mean, we wouldn’t want Thomas and Percy to be lonely inside the sock drawer. It gets so dark in there……..

Friday Shout Out

What a week! I am very thankful it is Friday.


I started the week with the goal of finishing a writing project. In fact, my plan was to cut the world off until I hit the send button and officially submitted the project.


At this point in my life, I should have seen that this was a set-up, but hoping for the best I continued on.


Monday started out perfect. I spent the day editing, packaging and polishing. Loved it. Thinking ahead, I knew I could take some extra breaks since my husband had a meeting that evening, and (after dinner) I'd be able to go right back to work.


Sounded good.


Well, regardless of how accomplished I feel in any given moment, my children have a way of knocking me back into reality.


As I was working, I noticed the house was too quiet. (And, every one with kid experience chuckles). Then.....I heard water running upstairs.


With a heavy sigh and not the nicest words running through my head, I ran up the stairs and found this.......

The picture doesn't do it justice so I'll explain. Bug and Squeaker decided it would be a good idea to style their hair with Colgate strawberry toothpaste. However, much to their avail, toothpaste does not provide the luxurious bubbles that one creates in the tub so they augmented their styling product by mixing the toothpaste with antibacterial soft soap. (let me digress by saying I hope Glade never decides to create a scent that combines strawberry toothpaste and plain antibacterial soap. Take my word for it, the product would not sell)

Talk about a mess! And, as an FYI, toothpaste leaves a very strange residue on sinks and fixtures. Ugh.

As for their experience? They may have had fun free stylin' their hair, but they learned the hard way as to why Mommy and Daddy choose to use Tears free baby shampoo instead of antibacterial soap. "Put your head back so the water doesn't get in your eyes" has taken on a whole new meaning for these two little bathroom chemists.

So, that was Monday.

My submission was prolonged to Tuesday, but I was okay with that. Well, I was until the simultaneous pressing of the send button was met with round 2 of Bug coming down with a virus. We have missed our second week of school for the month of February. That's a lot of make-up work. I'll be glad when flu season is over!

Well, now that's it's Friday, the project has been submitted, and Bug is on the upswing, I have rejoined the Land of Blog. Yeah!

Please swing by on Monday as I will have a pretty cool announcement. And, hopefully, this will be followed by a few more very cool announcements including a new weekly story series and the lauch of my new dot com. But, we'll get to that later.

As I gravel at the feet of my friends in blog land, please forgive the few and far between posts. It shall return to normal. So....come back and come again and I hope you enjoy!

Have a great weekend!