Start 'Em Young

Benjamin has really gotten onto a baseball kick. Can't imagine where he gets that from! Lately we've been watching some games, but he's really enjoying swinging the bat. We got him a tee to hit off of Friday. It's a plastic tee that converts later on to pop the balls in the air. Like I said, that's going to be a little ways off, but he's been hitting the heck out of it the last couple of days. He took two trips outside yesterday to hit, for probably a total of 45 minutes, then did some more today at my parents' when we went out there to celebrate Mother's Day.

So that's the setup. Here are some pictures:

This is the tee, with Benjamin getting ready to hit the ball. He typically says, "Swing!" when he swings the bat. There are five balls with the set, so I scoop them all up and keep putting them on the tee. "Swing! Swing! Swing!"

You'll notice that there is no ball in the shot. Benjamin can really crank some of them. I measured off some of his longer ones at fifteen paces, which seemed like a good distance to me. I think he may have put a couple farther than that today when he and I were out playing with Papaw (my dad).

He doesn't usually get in such an exaggerated crouch, but I thought this was a neat picture. He really doesn't have much of a stance at all yet. He tends to get a little too close to the ball and then top it, but we're working on it. Maybe by the end of the summer we can get the popup action going. Who cares if the box says 3+ on it?

After he hits for a while, he usually hands the bat to me and says, "You do it," or "Your turn." He likes putting the balls on the tee and seeing what Daddy can do.

Talk about form! Amazing that I'm only hitting a generous .333 in softball, huh?

Speaking of, had a couple of games last week. I missed the first one for a meeting at church. Whenever "visioning" is on the agenda, I feel like I've got to be there to ask about details and make sure people have thought of the different problems, etc. I may not be much on the "vision thing", but I can critique with the best of them! Anyway, that night, the team lead until the bottom of the last inning, when they gave up four runs and lost by one. So I had high hopes for Friday night's game.

We had enough people that I could start out on the bench, which was fine. The first play of the game was a fly ball to the outfield, which our fielder got under. This in and of itself was a good thing, since in the past we've just chased them down instead of getting under them. However, it popped out of his glove, which set the tone for the rest of the night. Numerous errors and an opponent that could really hit led to a 23-2 loss. I got in late to take over the catching duties and actually made it up to bad, flaring a ball over the shortstop that hit off his outstretched glove, basically like my other hit this season. So now I'm 2-for-6. I was forced at third this time, though, so couldn't add to the run total.

10 days remaining! If you've not been over to Meron's blog and seen the pregnancy pictures, go on and do so. Warning, as she says, they are rated BB for bare belly. If you saw the ones from when she was pregnant with Benjamin, you know the basic setup. Meron's mom will be here a week from tomorrow, which will be nice for her since she wasn't able to be here last time due to the uncertainty of when the baby was actually coming. Still last minute details, etc. to hash out, but nothing major. We had a shower this morning in Sunday School (us and the couple that are having twins two days after us) so we have plenty of diapers now! And my mother spent this weekend in Branson at the Carter's clothing outlet, so now Sarah's closet is full of clothes. So like a girl! She even has more shoes already than I think Benjamin has had in his life.

Keep tuning in over here. I hope to get at least one more blog entry done before the baby comes, but this will be the place for the first pictures of Sarah Elizabeth, most likely the evening of her birthday. And you wouldn't want to miss that, would you?