Weekend Little League

Our little guy, AHEM, I mean big bad 8-year-old had his first little league game this weekend.  We signed him up for baseball for the first time when he was only 4, so he's been playing for years, but this team is the first one he's been on where the kids pitch to each other.  In the past, they hit off a tee or the coaches pitched.  It's kind of an exciting milestone, and really fun to watch.  The weather was beautiful- you couldn't ask for a nicer opening day.

Pretty soon she got behind the camera, which resulted in some hilarious angry pictures of her older sister.

She got some good pictures of her brother batting, I just don't think she realized the camera was focusing on the fence.

Making sure we're paying attention.

Ready!

Staying loose...

Ducking under a bad pitch.

And then he gets beaned in the ankle.  If you look at the picture closely you can see the ball just before contact.  That one hurt.  He shed a few tears, needed a few hugs, and took a water break.  He was back on the field before the end of the game though.

That's him at shortstop- he made a good play out there.

The baby enjoyed herself at first (she loves being outside), but she got pretty tired and fussy about half way through.  She napped in our arms and it was alright.  When we got home she felt hot, (at the game we'd assumed it was just because it was a warm day), so we took her temperature and she did have a fever of 102.  Since she was clearly very uncomfortable we gave her some tylenol, and her temperature slowly dropped over the next several hours.  By 2 am-ish when she woke up for a diaper change and feeding she was completely back to normal, and the next day it was as if nothing had ever been wrong.  The moral of the story is, babies are weird.

At the end of the game the kids did the typical cheers for each other and high-fives all the way down the line.  Then the team huddled around the coach and of course my child is the first one to excitedly ask, "Did we win?!"  His competitive spirit knows no bounds.  I loved the coach's answer, "Ya know we're all good sports here, and the thing about being a good sport is whether you win or you lose you act the same- so we're not going to worry about the numbers... but we did get an extra few runs in..." I really appreciated the good sport angle, and I laughed when he couldn't help but add in that last part at the end, but we did win.

I'm competitive, too.  I don't sign my kids up for sports so they can win- I do it because it's fun and it's fresh air and sunshine and good sportsmanship is important and being on a team builds character and exercise YAY!

But still, winning is fun.

Besides, how do you practice being a good sport if you don't even know whether you won or lost?