May 20

The Little Boys played their final Saturday games of the baseball season this morning. Unfortunately for our family, both had 11 AM start times; more fortunately, their games happened to be on adjacent fields, so though Adam and I took a Divide-and-Conquer approach to the less than ideal circumstance, we could still kind of see what was happening in the Other Game.

Brady ended his TBall tenure with a few solid coach pitch-enabled hits --including a towering fly ball-- and emerged with the Game Ball. Isaac's team lost, but he had some great defensive plays at short and then pitched two innings, during which he threw a runner out at the plate and struck out a batter with the bases loaded to snuff out a scoring bid. He even recovered after a hard grounder bounced off his chin; he cried for a few seconds, but stayed in the game and got the last batters out. He impressed me; he always impresses me, but the resilience he showed was pretty remarkable. I don't think I would want to stay in the game after a baseball bounced off my face.

So it seemed appropriate to celebrate with some ice cream after lunch. I don't have the participation trophy mentality, but I like to reward my kids when their behavior embodies good character; when they work through challenging circumstances and don't give up (as Isaac did), or when they put their best effort into play and find success (as was the case for Brady).

So what's my point here? The usual: I feel blessed to be their mom. One of Isaac's teachers said to me yesterday that I'd done a great job with him because he's (using her actual words) "like, the best kid ever", but it's not really me. It's God blessing me --blessing us-- with some pretty terrific children. And that's something I'm mindful of every single day.