Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Jack Day

Kate's doing a gymnastics camp this week, so I'm spending a little more time with Jack. He has typically done a baseball camp this time of year, but we figured, let's let him take a break.

The first couple of days of the week weren't anything special; back from vacation, we had stuff that had to get done. Work, haircuts, mowing lawns, catching up on XBox and Instagram. But today? This was a Jack day.

First, we hauled out the batting tee, the net, the balls and his bat. We hadn't done anything baseball related for almost two weeks -- since his last game, really -- and it was a little rough. It was also about 90 degrees out, but whatever.

We start by him hitting off the tee into the net to get his swing down. Then I soft toss him balls from the side and he drills them into the net. Finally I pitch to him, not baseballs but soft, stress-type balls and a couple of dryer balls, much to Emily's dismay. Anyway, the pitching part started out poorly. Lot of swing and misses, lot of fouls behind him. Some of my pitches were bad, some his timing was off, whatever. He started to get frustrated. I said, Hey, this is why we practice. We're out of the routine and need to get back into it. No worries. (Because, you know, Fall Ball!)

Anyway, he was obviously getting tired, and hot, and frustrated. I asked him if he wanted to stop, he shook his head. Gradually it got better, and he started rocketing them onto the deck and off the side of the house. Ok, he said, we can stop now.

We each guzzled a Gatorade and drove to the comic store in Stamford. Hadn't been in a long while. They also had Baseball cards, which was his main interest. He ended up getting a Jacob DeGromm (Met star) and Max Scherzer with a piece of his game-worn jersey. Yeah, they're doing some crazy things with limited edition cards these days. Anyway, he was happy.

On the way home we saw these dinosaur sculptures scattered through the town. Something Stamford does, themed artwork that changes each year or so. "Cool!" Said Jack, as we saw each new one. Me too.

We went home and grilled hotdogs for lunch, Jack read a comic I bought for Kate. Then we scooped up a friend of Kate's on our way to get Kate and go to the pool. Tried to get one of Jack's, too, but almost everyone goes on vacation this week. I guess I will have to play with you at the pool, Jack, I said. "Yay!"

You probably aren't aware just how many pool games there are that involve throwing a soft fabric ball around the water. I certainly wasn't. We played The Skipping Game, Catch, Pepper, Diving, One Hand, and several others. When we weren't doing that, I threw the ball for him to dive in off the side of the pool to catch it, the more spectacular the better. Occasionally we took breaks, hanging out by the side of the pool and talking about NFL players / fantasy football and baseball. And did you know his card had a piece of Max Scherzer's jersey in it?

You will be glad to know we kept an eye on the girls, which wasn't hard since they went down the slide about a billion times. And hung out in the shallow end playing on kick boards. And traded goggles, and hair ties, and made each other laugh. And swam some too. At one point I sent Jack over to play with them or toss the ball to them. He came back shortly. "They just splashed me and sent me away," he said. Ok then.

End of the day, we came home and had dinner. While Kate showed Emily something upstairs, Jack and I threw the football around the back yard. On the 5th try we nailed our most difficult route, called Shed, with a perfect throw and catch. Ok, we agreed, we're done here.

Putting him to bed, I said, Hey Jack, I had a really fun day with you. I realized that really, we hadn't done that in a while, spent a day together doing stuff. He said, "Yeah, we played baseball...went to the comic store...the pool...had hotdogs...we even played football!" Pretty sure he went to bed smiling. Me too.


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