The non-athletic legacy of our family

For three years in elementary school, I played basketball. Well, that is, if you defined "playing basketball" as "joining a team, wearing a uniform, attending practice and games." There was this one time at a game where I touched the ball. It's true. It was even during the game, like, not even during half time. It happened to come to me, and I quickly passed it off to someone who knew what to do with it.
I see a lot of myself in Aaric, when it comes to sports. He's on a soccer team, and he wears the uniform and looks forward to practice and games. But he seems to lack not only the skills but also the confidence to actually PLAY the game. This past week, it was cold so he wore sweatpants and his hands were actually in his pockets for half of the game. I wasn't looking when it happened, but I kinda suspect that's why he got banged in the nose by someone else's head. We frequently remind him to pay attention and attempt to watch the ball. He mainly just follows the crowd up and down the field, taking his cues from the kids who do actually know what's going on. Our best player isn't technically on our team. We only have 6 kids on the team and so we frequently recruit siblings, cousins, friends, and even just random kids walking by, to play on our team. One little boy has been recruited twice now and he's really really good. Aaric really has fun, though.


Mikayla just really isn't into soccer at all. She likes to go to practice and the games, because she looks forward to the socialization and is quite reluctant to actually participate. She looks good while doing it, though.


So, related to sports...
My mom came up a few weeks ago. She took them for a walk all over creation and Mikayla was scared they'd gotten lost. Mikayla found a baseball, and apparently refused to leave it behind. I thought we threw it away later. I don't like baseballs. Not only am I no good at baseball, they just seem like they'd break a lot of things and cause concussions. But Monday, I found it in the front yard. I didn't connect the dots at the time. Earlier, the kids had the window open in their upstairs playroom, and I knew Mikayla had been sitting in it (yes, much worse accident waiting to happen, I'm aware!) and I'd heard Aaric mention something about Mikayla throwing a ball. It was Tuesday morning when all the pieces clicked together in my brain. See, this window is directly above our driveway. The driveway where we park the van. If you haven't connected the dots yet, the ball went out the window, and directly onto our windshield. See, I knew there was a good reason I didn't like baseballs!

So there will very likely be no soccer playing this spring (Aaric may play, we're playing that by ear, but Mikayla definitely will not), no baseball playing ever, and if it weren't a fire hazard, we'd be putting screws in the windows to keep them shut.
Now I must get back to my routine of nursing, re-diapering, and cleaning spit up off of everything. And because I figure you just haven't seen quite enough of him yet, here is another picture. Mikayla captured this frequent scene: Me on the internet (raise your hand if you recognize my fashionable shirt), Xander searching for food.



*****
I forgot to mention the workout that i got as a result of all this. While we waited on the van to get fixed, Mikayla, Xander and I walked to find breakfast. Well, Xander didn't walk. There were no restaurants nearby. So we walked a mile down Bragg Boulevard to the McDonald's, past countless pawnshops, tattoo parlors, strip clubs and porn shops, to get there. And it was closed for remodelling. So we had to walk across an insanely busy intersection to get to a Subway, eat, and walk that lovely mile back to the repair shop. It was a blast.