Slide Show Photos: Play ball!

With all this rain and dreariness I am feeling completely unmotivated to be creative in any way. So, today, I'm going to take the easy way out! It's been a while since I have shared the story behind a picture from the slide show - so today I think I'll do two!

It's that time of year again. The time of year when our schedule revolves around Mike playing softball during the week and tournaments on the weekends. Two of my favorite pictures from the slideshow are the ones of Corban at softball games. He has always loved watching Daddy play ball. The first time we took Corban to a tournament in Dublin was when Corban was 12 weeks old. He doesn't remember that one ;) but Mike and I do. It was our first mini-trip with Corban and we ended up having to let him cry it out to get to sleep. It was so hard! And we felt so bad for the people in rooms near us! Corban also decided he didn't really need to eat while we were gone either. I was one stressed out momma! To top it off, it decided to rain most of the weekend and the tournament got cancelled early. I think some teams may have stayed until Monday but as I recall we ended up going home Sunday morning. And the only picture I think I have of Corban's "first" tournament is inside the hotel room with Mike holding him. Ah, the memories.

The next year was much better. Corban was about 15 months old (Labor Day 2004) which is just a super fun age, I always think. The weather was much better, too. I snapped this picture of Corban mid-step and we now call it the Beetles picture because it reminds us of their Abbey Road album cover. If you look close you can also see a very ornery look on Corban's face. He had a great time! I think he felt like such a big boy. Also, the outfit he is wearing was one of my all-time favorites. I believe he got it for his first birthday and it had a baseball on the front; sort of appropriate. And, do you see his little sandles? They were a birthday gift from his baby-sitter and my friend, Missy Wagler. He lost those sandals more times than I can count and I made many trips back to stores and other places to retrieve the missing shoe, but it was worth it because they were just the cutest little things! Jared wore them last summer and I think we ended up putting them in Corban's memory box because they were some of our favorites. Betcha didn't know there could be that much of a story with one picture!

This picture is from the next spring, a week or two shy of Corban's 2nd birthday. We are up at the fields at Kent State watching Daddy play softball again. You can see Daddy and his cousin TJ in the dugout behind Corban. I used to say that Corban was a very stoic child. He was very serious and not too quick to laugh or really show you what he was thinking or feeling. This picture shows that well. He is a happy boy, just quiet and thoughtful. I love how big the softball and glove look in his tiny hands. He wants to play with the big boys so badly! And if you look really close, on the left side of his head (right side as you look at the picture), above his eyebrow, you can see a darker spot. That is where he hit his head on the corner of the bannister when he tripped over my sweeper's cord. He hit his head so hard his skin looked like he had stitches. Seriously, people asked me at the grocery story why he had stitches. We had to take him the the ER and they did a CT scan on him. At the time our insurance wouldn't let us go to the hospital my mom works at (where she is the supervisor in the Radiology dept and would have been the one to do the CT!) and I was so upset about that. But, Corban was fine, he just had a nasty bump. And to this day, pretty much every time I run the sweeper I remember seeing him trip and fall and not being able to catch him or help.

I love this picture because it says so much about who we are as a family and you almost get a look into the soul of my little boy to see his quiet heart that longs to play with the big boys.

I also see that Corban is wearing his tiny little converse sneakers. Sydney and Jared can both fit in them now. These are more of our favorite shoes that we will probably not be able to part with once they are outgrown.