Baseball at age 5

A couple of weeks ago Exo turned 5. He was excited about it for weeks and would proudly announce to anyone who asked that he was almost 5. Exo is a little guy with a ton of energy. He's short enough that he uses a booster seat at the table. He typically runs instead of walking and is known to jump from the furniture and attempts flips and standing on his head. He's also pretty smart, can write his name, and most days he can tell me what they worked on in Pre-K. He loves his little brother and smothers him with hugs and kisses.  He's super ticklish if you can catch him.

His birthday was a beautiful sunny fall afternoon and when I got home from work some friends were here eating ice cream in celebration. Because it was so nice and we had extra hands, we went outside to try some "baseball" with a big plastic bat and ball. Some cardboard that hasn't made it into the recycling worked as bases. Exo's instinct was to run to third base after getting a hit. Eventually he got it figured out, though he sometimes ran directly from first to third.  He just likes to run. At one point, all the kids were on base so we talked Christine into taking a turn with the bat while I held Joshua. Pretty soon the neighbors from across the street came over with their 3 year old boy who had been telling them since we got out there that he wanted to go play with those kids.

I wasn't in town for his birthday party the following Sunday but I heard stories about their baseball "game". The American family doing the pitching reported they were in the field while everyone else took turns batting and running the bases This time Mario got in on the action as well. A few days later I turned on the World Series so the family could see a real baseball game. Unfortunately the few innings we watched didn't have much action and no runs were scored. They were amazed at how the players snatched the ball out of the air with their gloves. The shots from the blimp brought several comments as well about the size of the stadium, the number of people there, and the number of cars. 

A Small Moment

I am often in classrooms during writing time so I've heard teachers from Kindergarten to 3rd grade tell their students to write about a "small moment" that really happened to them. I think they do this right at the beginning of the school year because kids find it more interesting to write about something they did over the summer than the mundane of the school year. Typically my week is rather mundane, but this week didn't feel that way at all. So here's small moment from the week that held many more.

Monday morning I woke up to the sound of thunder and rain on the roof. It has rained so much during September that Mario asked me one morning if it was rainy season. I told him this isn't normal and that this is a record breaking month in a year when we've received over 16 inches more than normal. My first stop Monday morning was the doctor's office. By the time I got in the door, I felt like a wet dog as I took off my rain jacket and gave it a good shake so I wouldn't drip all the way to office on the 2nd floor. When I came out, only a light sprinkle was falling. However water was running along the gutters and I took a couple of detours to avoid deeper water running across the street. In places water was gushing out of people's yards onto the street.

Once I got to the school I decided to set up shop at an empty table at the end of one of the hallways rather than going to my usual space out in a portable.  It was a wise choice as it rained all day alternating between sprinkles and what the French call "raining ropes". I watched the puddles in the playground turn to a lake and the low spots fill with water. The official total for the day was 2.07 inches but others reported over 4 inches in their rain gauge. The weather man expects the rain to continue for the next couple of weeks with an occasional day of sun in between systems. It looks like talk about the weather will continue to include comments about being thankful that it isn't snow, people telling their water-in-the-basement stories, and wondering how the farmers are going to harvest their crops.