For The Love Of The Game

As I've posted several times, Eli is a baseball nut. He loves to watch it, he loves to play it, he loves to talk about it.... I thought we'd covered all of the basics with him, but he picked up two new tricks last week when he saw a softball game. Now when we play catch, Eli squats down to catch and throw the ball, like the catcher does. I tried to tell him that he can stand up to throw the ball, but he insists on squatting to catch and throw. He also started yelling, "Hey batter batter!!" when he hits. That's right, when he hits. I guess he's trying to psych himself up?

We had a really good day on Monday, which I forgot to mention. After Eli's nap we played outside while Maddux snoozed. She woke up before Lehr got home, so I tried to kill thirty minutes before I fed her (in the hopes Lehr would be present to entertain the lad). I put Maddux in the single BOB and told Eli we were going to walk to the top of the street so he could run down. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac with a lot of kids on our street, so cars go slower than usual. Plus I always keep Eli in front of me (coming down the street), so any incoming cars would have to hit me before they got to him. (That was a joke.) Eli is really good about running to the gutter when he hears a car; he even does this when he hears a car several streets away. That being said, he loves to run down the street because he's 'free' of the stroller and Mommy's hand. On Monday he started up the street very excitedly. Then about halfway up, he stopped and held out his hand to me: "Hold-ya?" I grabbed his little hand and he continued on walking. My heart skipped a dozen beats! What a sweet gesture from a usually non-touchy-feely boy! He did this again last night when we repeated the time-wasting walk. On the run back down the street, he turned around three or four times and waved to us saying, "Hi Baby!!!". He does love his baby sister!