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.