Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Perfect Attendence.

Pretty impressive for a Kindergartner.

His very first year of “real” school and he hasn’t missed a day.

Our city’s baseball team has a program where they give a free baseball ticket to students with perfect attendence and Little Boy K was over the moon about his very special “prize”.  He could not wait for us to go to the ballpark.  And his pride and excitement was infectious, causing my heart to swell at least three times its true size.

After perusing the available game times for the weekends on which Little Boy K was going to be in town, I discovered that we would have to attend a night game.  My excitement deflated a little.  The night games do not start until 7pm.  Deflated a little more.

In my typical fashion, I immediately resorted to thinking of all of the things that could go wrong in this situation, a skill that is helpful to a lawyer but really just annoying and a buzzkill to the rest of the world (probably one of the reasons it is a profession with serious PR problems).

In my mind, this was a recipe for disaster:

3 tickets and 1 lap child in the handicapped section of the stadium
1 night time game that would have everyone up well past their bed time
1 restless baby refusing to sit in his seat
1 overtired 6 year old consuming massive amounts of junkfood
1 trip through dangerous areas of downtown in the dark (make that 2 trips)

Stir it up, shake it around, while sprinkling hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, beer, grease and public restrooms on top and there you have it – Big Fat Nightmare Night!

But the most miraculous thing occurred.

We had the best time.

Baby S sat on the floor for a while until we were reprimanded but then was so entertained by everything he say happening on the field, he sat quite still.

He watched K dance to the music and imitated him by rolling his little hands over and over each other (I think it’s called the locomotion?).

He pointed at all the ball players and tried to use his words.

Little Boy K did in fact consume massive amounts of popcorn and hot dogs but when we drew the line at ice cream (we were only there for an hour, seriously), he accepted it with an impressive amount of grace.

He got his very first Astros cap that he has worn to school every single day since.

I was so wrong.  It wasn’t a disaster at all.  I think we might even go back.  The parade of horrors I had envisioned all week turned out to be a complete waste of energy.  Maybe Mommy needs to spend less time worrying and more time thinking like a kid.

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Tagged as: baseball, firsts