Coach's kids

I've discovered the best way to move up in the batting order on the baseball team is to have your dad coach or help coach.  There is a primary dad coach and three secondary dad coaches and not surprisingly - their sons bat 1-4.

Now - I'm clearly not willing to put my money where my mouth is and get involved in the coaching - so my best bet is to just shut up.  :)  Also - there is probably some correlation between those parents interested in baseball to the point that they are coaching; and the number of times their boys have been to the batting cages off-season and/or played continuously since they were 4.  Let's just say - the coach's kids are generally pretty good.

So baseball season has begun, and on the team of boys in grades 1-2 (with a young 3rd grader in the mix too) Jacob should be on the older and more experienced side.  However, he appears to have been put on a pretty good (and skewed older) team.  So, just like last year, he's at the bottom of the batting order. Though in the practice game tonight he got on base every time he was up to bat (not at all like last year).

I guess all he can do is continue to hit well and hope that he moves up in the batting order (it's hard to get worse than second-to-last).  On the up-side, he's been playing a variety of positions (not just outfield).  It's also possible that this year's coaches have a different philosophy about the batting order - mixing the weaker hitters around so as not to get three outs in a row (which is frankly what happened last year when Jacob, Keaton, and Anthony all batted one after the other in an order that was always slightly different but had them in last, next-to-last, and next-to-next-to-last every game).

I said before - too - his team is pretty good.  They can almost all bat, and hit pretty consistently.  And at the end of the day - getting around the bases and winning the games probably takes some of the sting off your batting order position.  Still, I bet he would move up a little bit if Brian and I were part of the baseball "in" crowd.

OMG - writing again

I'll see how much blogging I can do in the span of time it takes Jacob to write the last sentence of writing tonight.

This is what he's doing RIGHT NOW:

balancing a nickel on his nose

Now I've also snapped a pic with my iPhone, e-mailed it to myself, saved it to my computer, and uploaded it here.  Any farther on the sentence..... No.

He's trying to find things to say and then minimize the number of words that it takes to say them.  He's got a great future in texting and Twitter.  I'm trying to convince him that WOHR will not be interpreted as walk-off home runs.

Now - he wanted to use the same word as a previous sentence - so he drew an arrow!  This kid works hard at hardly working!

What did you do for Earth Day?

Earth Day is Allison's second favorite holiday.  The first favorite is Valentine's Day.  But, she'll be clear with you - she doesn't love Earth Day, she loves the Earth.  So yesterday began the summer long project of cleaning up trash.  I say summer-long because (though it takes a few trips), I get into the habit of having trash bags with me so that we can pick up trash when we go to the park or walk home from school.

For Earth Day, Allison took a trip around the block - picking up stray garbage.  Lucky for us it was reasonably warm (mid-50's), thus the lightweight jacket.  Mean mom makes the kids wear Winter Coats until the temp reaches 50 degrees.  Terrible, terrible me.  It's amazing how 45 degrees in October is freezing, but 45 degrees in spring and it's time to break out the short sleeves.

Indoor Soccer Ends

Yesterday marked the end of indoor soccer, which Jacob has been playing almost every Monday night since October.  Here's the team:

Spencer, Lucas, Colton, Logan, Kaden, Jacob, Will, Keaton, Sam, and Brady.

They won their last game.  Jacob had a few nice shots, but none went in.  Jacob wants to be a professional soccer player when he grows up.  He probably has a ways to go, but he has gotten a lot better this year.  Outdoor soccer practice starts on Wednesday - in the COLD.  He won't be teammates with any of these boys, as most (the five on the right) are only playing baseball and the others (three on the left) who are playing soccer were placed on different teams.  But he will get to play with two other boys from his grade.  It'll probably be good to play with new people too.

School Concert

Yeah - sorry for the fuzzy camera work - I was trying to get a pic of Allison between the heads of those two guys while fending off Jacob who had decided he could only watch the 3rd-4th grade concert from my lap.  ??

Allison had her school concert last week.  There she is in the front row, being a full head shorter than the nearest other fourth grader.  The concert went OK.  For some reason, Allison didn't sing during the first two songs.  I believe she didn't like them.  Then there was the Erie Canal song, followed by the 50 States Song, followed by This Land is Your Land.  Allison's music teacher is strongly into folk music, particularly the patriotic and camp-song kind.  The teacher she'd had before was much more a formal music kinda woman.

But, if you think our view was bad, you should realize we were in the 4th row of about 30 rows in the very flat gym.  The kids stood roughly at ground level - so it was much more of a listening exercise than a viewing exercise.

It's not addition

Jacob has started a new unit in math - unknown addends.  A sample problem would look like this: Jacob and Allison have 435 jelly beans between them.  Jacob has 181 jelly beans.  How many does Allison have?

If you are in second grade, this is supposed to process as: 181 + ____ = 435.  Then you add up: start at 181; plus 9 = 190; plus 10 more = 200; plus 235 more = 435.  Therefore the answer = 9 + 10 + 235 = 254.

If you are normal, you process this problem as 435 - 181 = 254 (making whatever 'borrowing from the neighbor digit' you need to).

Jacob is apparently quite normal - as I tried to follow the worksheet they sent home on unknown addends; he quite insistantly told me that it was not an "add" MOM, it was a "subtract."  Ok - fair enough - let's do it that way.

What was funny was that Brian was also looking at the Unknown Addends How To For Parents sheet this morning and had almost the exact same reaction.  "This is not an addition problem - it's a subtraction problem!"

Chiago Favorites

We heard about the best parts of visiting Springfield.  This post is dedicated to the kids favorites while visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Chicago.

First - views of the Willis Tower - from any location - facing any direction - at any angle.

Swimming in the pool.  Walking to get gelato.  Balloon animals.  Playing with Aidan and Paddy.  The Aon building.  The Trump Tower.  The Hancock Center.

The rhino and the unicorn

There are times when you see the unicorn - that moment, skill, action, smile, word - that you didn't think existed or had seen so long ago it was forgotten.  When we see the unicorn, we approach slowly so as not to startle it.  We keep our head down, we move quietly.  We hold out our hand and let the unicorn come to us.

Or - sometimes - we charge at the unicorn like a rhinoceros. 

Jacob (my perpetual "who will play with me? kid") was downstairs with his ("can I please play by myself?") sister when a fight broke out.  Apparently, Allison had agreed to play with Jacob.  And not just play with him - play videogames with him.  Enter the unicorn.

Jacob was unhappy with Allison's game request (Skylanders).  Enter the rhino.

Allison happily trotted out of this situation (to the grave upset of her brother), driven forward by hopes of greener fields upstairs with her Monster High Dolls.  The path to freedom was blocked by Mom, who managed to broker a brief truce between the rhino and the unicorn.  The unicorn offered three other games to play.  The rhino was undeterred.  The rhino offered three other games to play.  The unicorn was uninterested.

After much roaring and foot stomping from the rhino (literally), the unicorn was set free to feast on greener pastures.

Ultimately, brokered peace deals are only one quick head turn away from disaster when you have two beasts with sharp horns.

And then there was ice

Annoyed today

So this is a post where I vent about things.  Because today was a crappy day.  It started because I was being e-mailed something on hotmail that was time-sensitive.  I set aside the time I needed to do it - and then - no hotmail.  Could not access the thing I needed.  Could not e-mail the person who was sending it to me because - guess what! - their contact info was in hotmail.  Bah.

Then it started to rain and a sinus headache hit while at work - with nothing to take.  Bah.

I had to go back and forth with the Online program AGAIN about this course development.  Sure - I'll develop a 4 credit class for you in the same semester I'm teaching 4 other classes - all because you didn't manage your people resources very well.  Oh, and I've love to START OVER because the company you contracted with wants me to use their textbook rather than the textbook you approved before.  Lovely.

Then I went to park at the kids' school and the people were parking with like... 6-8 feet between cars.  Just enough that another car WOULDN'T fit there, but far enough that the line was already several cars past the school fence.  I get bugged by inefficient parking in front of the school.

So - I should now think of some good things that happened today.... like.... the kids woke up without complaining.  Jacob practiced his piano.  And Allison spontaneously apologized for something that she said when she was mad.

April

Is happens that every day you don't blog makes it harder to write the next day.  This somewhat reminds me of my dissertation.  Anyway, here's us for the last few weeks:

I had spring break!  Wow, got caught up.  Took a day off.  Hired a cleaning lady.  Good times.

We took a trip to Chicago with friends.  We ate A LOT.  The kids spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa downtown while Brian and I had a nice dinner and then out to drinks with our friends.  Sunday morning, we went out for dim sum.  Jacob tried chicken feet.  He's more adventurous than his mom.

I had a birthday!  Woo hoo!  Got older!  Brian got tickets to Book of Mormon for this coming weekend. SUPER EXCITED!

The kids had a spring break.  Their favorite thing (I asked the singular) was "seeing Kellen and Chloe, eating ice cream cake, going to the zoo, going to the roller rink, and getting free donuts."  In other words - they had lots of fun with Grandma; Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Derek, Aunt Nancy and Kellen and Chloe.  We heard Aunt Nancy might have even waded into the waters of nail trimming.  God Bless Her.

The kids came home Saturday and went back to school today.  Tonight we had a fight with Jacob about his writing homework.  So, we know we're back to normal.