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| (Photo’s from summer past, a rough version of soccer on Papa and Nanny’s lawn.) |
Had my first game of ‘scrub baseball’ with the kids. Riddick, the family dog, was tied to a tree so he would stop breaking up the game. He has a nutty streak that just wants to destroy every ball he sees.
My youngest, being only three, spent most of his time bursting in and out of the game… apparently he was a little confused as to which game we where playing. I would be just about to pitch the ball to the child at bat when someone would yell, ‘Baby boy, playing through!’, on cue a boy and his yellow soccer ball would madly run in and out of our way.
The older two figured the game out in no time. Hit the ball with bat, put bat down, run to big tree and back to home before being tagged. We had the expected attempts to nail the runner by throwing the ball AT them as hard as possible, the occasional stomping of feet when one didn’t make it back to home before being tagged, and one person got hit with the ball… that was Mom, of course. I knew no good could come from being the first person to teach my oldest boy to pitch… he got me in the back and then I taught him, with excellent patience and grace I might add, to aim over the plate and not AT the batter.
My five year old daughter did a great job at running to the little person’s base and back (had a shorter run for the shorter kids) but forgot to put the bat down and that sure slowed her down… considering it’s almost as big as her.
The older two really liked getting Mom out and thought it was fun to try to block me on my way back to home base. The required, but rare, scrub baseball tackle entered the game at this point. “Mama will knock you down”, I grinned between wheezing for breath, as I picked my 8 year old up off the ground. Dusted him off and we both laughed about it. Of course he pulled it again in hopes of another wrestling match with Mom… ah boys…
So we didn’t completely stick to baseball, but it was a good first lesson!
My parents introduced us to pretty much every game under the sun, the ‘scrub’ version that is… less rules, rotating teams, no counting score and just fun… I will always cherish the times my Grandma Smith got involved and wowed all us grand-kids. She was such a sportsman! I hope to encourage my children to JUST ENJOY it like she did. I figure, like my parents must have, introduce the kids to enough sports in your own back yard and you help encourage them toward an active lifestyle. We learned quickly it was about fun and activity. That it didn’t matter much how amazing we where if we where hearty of spirit and ready to play!
TTFN
