March 16

After a week of delays, the baseball season finally opened today. Both Isaac and Brady --particularly Isaac, who loves playing so much that he told me last night that he wished he could skip the hours until his game-- were excited to suit up and head out this afternoon.

As it turned out, neither the AA Red Sox nor the AAA Braves emerged victorious from their match-ups, but neither game was a blowout and both teams played well enough to win -- just not today.

The boys responded to their respective losses in unsurprising ways: Brady simply shrugged and said he had fun and enjoyed catching, and then rightly noted that they'd be playing again on Thursday. Page turned. That's Brady. Isaac, however, took it harder. I could tell that he was assessing the performance as we walked away from the field, and I could also tell that he wasn't exactly thrilled with how it all went down. That's Isaac. But by the time we got home after a Slurpee stop, both boys had returned to a positive mindset and scurried to the back yard --still wearing their uniforms and cleats-- to play catch.

I love Brady's adaptability and how he can bounce back from less than stellar experiences. And I love how Isaac thinks and processes and fine-tunes, all with the end goal of playing better. And I absolutely love how, at the end of the day, something as simple as baseball can bring them together.