Adventures in T - Ball

I'm the worst mom ever and I'll tell you why: I hate T-ball. Sparky coaches the boys' soccer and basketball teams, so by the time baseball season rolls around, we are pretty burned out. Thing 1 decided not to play baseball this year, and we did a silent cheer when he wasn't looking. Thing 2, however, loves snacks and trophies, so he wanted to play again this year. We put on our happy faces and signed him up for the Orioles, since he played on their team last year. Bad move. They have a new coach, and he is super nice, but any skills Thing 2 has picked up this year have been from the few minutes here and there we've spent working with him in the yard or at the park. I'm not one of those parents that dresses up the whole family in Orioles gear for the games (we have some of those on this team), or is living through my kid's experiences, pushing him hard, dreaming of him pitching in the world series. I just, you know, want there to be a point for us to sit through two games a week besides getting to take pictures of him in catcher's gear (so cute!), and the fact that we paid for him to do this. But I could live with this if it weren't for the whole T-Ball Snack Fiasco of 2008 *cue scary music*.

A couple of weeks ago, it was our turn to bring the snack. Now I should preface this by saying that I have issues with the whole snack thing. Why can't it be like when we were kids, where every once in a while your mom showed up at half time with a bunch of cut up oranges and everyone was happy? Our kids have gotten ridiculous snacks in the past - the 3 course meal snack, the Halloween-came-early-this-year snack, and what I like to call the happy meal snack, where it comes with a toy. Now maybe I'm just being the T-ball Scrooge and I need to lighten up a little, but I refuse to spend 50 bucks or more on the snack. So anyway, we had the snack, and it wasn't horrible - craisins, a granola bar, a fruit roll, and a little bottle of gatorade. A little on the healthy side, but I don't think the kids would have tossed it in the trash on the way home. After the game I went on the field to give it to the kids, and the team mom comes over and stands right in front of me with this big cooler. I asked her what she was doing, we had snack, and she told me not to worry, she just wanted to give something out because she had forgotten to bring snack the week before. So then the kids come over, and she starts handing out her bags-o'-candy and drinks, and Thing 2 ends up being the only kid that takes one of my snacks. The team mom was completely unapologetic, and I was fuming. Thing 2 looked at me with big worried eyes and said, "Mom, I thought we had snack." Sparky kept giving me sideways glances, waiting to see when I was going to explode, but luckily I held it in until we got to the car.

Giving in to Peer Pressure

So, for the last couple of years, I have had people politely nudging me to do a blog. It does make sense - I enjoy writing, and I have a husband who is a computer genius. But with a husband, three kids, two pain-in-the-butt diseases, and 11 piano students, I haven't had the time to just sit down and create one. Well, today I don't know why, but I decided to go Nike and just do it. So here it is. Aren't you so pleased?

My husband and I aren't big on putting our family's names out there in the big bad web, so from this point on, my husband will be known as Sparky a la the Chevy Chase Vacation movies, and the boys will be, from oldest to youngest, Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3. (The idea for this came from Sara's post with her two youngest kids in cute Thing1 and Thing 2 shirts. Thanks, Sara!) If my family doesn't like them, too bad. They can get their own blogs.

I know I'm going to get questions about this - why "Training Fireballs?" Fireball was my nick name in high school. It came from a friend of mine who was at one of my volleyball games my sophomore year, who was unfortunately completely stoned at the time. I had rattled off a bunch of serves in a row, and he yelled out during the match, "Wow! Those things are like fireballs!" After that, people started calling me Fireball (with red hair, the nick name came easily), and the name kind of stuck. I became Fireball Trainer when I graduated from college with a degree in Athletic Training and passed the NATA certification exam, and now that we have our three boys, I figure I am training my own little fireballs. And they truly can be fireballs, as you will see in future posts.

I think one of the reasons why it took me a while to start blogging is that I wasn't sure what I wanted to blog about. I wanted to do a blog about my family, one about Addison's disease and Celiac disease, one about my running and fitness goals, one about the mountains of books that I read, and maybe one about being an LDS gen X mom. I just don't have time to do them all. They are all going to be smooshed into this blog, so I apologize in advance for the seeming randomness of my posts (and I apologize for, you know, you having to read my blog. Seriously. You must either be family or a really great friend).