Wrapping Up

Gosh, summer seems to last forever around here and yet be painfully short at the same time. I don't remember summers being like this when I was a kid. They seemed to stretch out forever. I was usually ready to go back to school. And I wasn't signed up for several camps with built in entertainment either. Somehow, I managed to entertain myself without turning on the TV all the time. I wonder how that happened.

So, the last couple of weeks of summer finally arrived with August. I was excited to take Smunch to baseball camp at the San Jose Giants' Municipal Stadium. He'd declared that he liked neither of the baseball camps he'd been to in previous summers, so I thought this one might be good for a change...and it would be a blast for him to get to play on the big field with stands and a PA system. Meanwhile, I sent Mam to cooking school for half a day each day. It didn't really give me a lot of time and it turned into even less time when Smunch got sick after just one day of baseball camp.

He made it to the first day and the last day and missed everything in between. What a bummer! Still, he was looking like a pro on the last day, when they got to play games and be announced over the PA system.He really enjoyed the camp. Hard to tell if that's because he missed two days or because it was a better experience for him. They gave us an evaluation of his skills. It fairly glowed with praise and said he stood out in his group. Maybe that was the big difference. In other camps he didn't stand out. But it turns out that many of the boys in San Jose had only played for a season or two. Smunch just finished his fifth. No matter. He had a good time. That's all that counts for me!

And although I took no pictures of Mam in her cute little cooking apron, she had a blast baking every morning. She even started asking to help in the kitchen all the time. Once in a while, I can even come up with something for her to do and that's pretty darned cute. Worth every penny, that camp.

The same week saw the end of swimming lessons for the summer. I feel like I can finally say with some confidence that the kids can swim. They may not look pretty doing it, but given a fall into a pool, they're not just going to give up and drown.And I was perversely pleased that the brother/sister pair they had lessons with was far more misbehaved and obnoxious than they were. After this summer, they've been taught all the strokes, they just need some polishing. O.K., so they still look like they're drowning if they're attempting to swim butterfly, but still... Smunch's freestyle was looking great and Mam's backstroke is coming along nicely The evening after Mam's last day of camp (Friday, where Smunch was done on Thursday), we took our last summer trip to AT&T Park. Smunch was not thrilled with the choice of games we'd made.The biggest fan in the world does not like to see his team lose and he figured that a game against the Phillies was a likely loss.

Mam, on the other hand, was thrilled that we decided to take her to a game this season.And although she enjoyed a hot dog and some cotton candy, she mostly reminded me why we don't take her to games. She's a real pain. Crawling on the ground, asking to go home, being bored out of her mind.

Of course, by the time the sixth inning rolled around, Smunch was asking to go home too. This almost never happens, but Jonathan Sanchez was pitching and doing a poor job of it. They were losing 8-2. We made him stick around a little longer. And what a great idea that was! The only redeeming value to the game, in the end, was getting to see a bench-clearing scrum initiated by Sanchez hitting Shane Victorino with a pitch and Victorino making like he was going to charge the mound.This lasted quite some time and was the most amusing part of an eventual 9-2 loss.

One more family vacation and then summer is just about over. Thank goodness. The fighting and boredom are both unbearable. Then again, so is homework...

Baseball Camping and Team #4

This is the kids' first week of camp for the summer. They're in two camps each this year, so the next week of camp will also be their last week. I decided to go easy on the schedule this year after our camp/vacation marathon last year. This week, Mam is going to half-day cooking camp in one direction while Smunch is in full-day baseball camp in the other.

Think this is too much pressure?Nah! This baseball camp has a really good reputation, so I enrolled Smunch this year. At the end of last year's week of baseball camp (a different camp) Smunch never wanted to go back, but I talked him into this one...and he's having a blast.

Having spent so much time on the baseball diamond already this year, Smunch knows enough other kids who love baseball that he already knew a couple of the kids there (thankfully) and they make a cute little bunch that sits together every morning.They spend their mornings learning baseball skills and then spend their afternoons on teams, playing ball. Smunch is on the Mets and although he got separated from most of the other boys, he's still with one he knows. And it turns out he's happy with that.

'Cause the other boys ended up playing for the Dodgers.

Camping Right Along

Last week was another week of camps. This time, Smunch was at baseball camp from 9 to 3:30 every day. And it was HOT. And there wasn't a lot of shade. After the first day, I took to sending him with three water bottles. That seemed to do it. As you can see, he was a little guy at camp. This camp was for 7 to 12-year-olds, so he was on the young side and he's always been on the small side for his age. He wasn't the smallest kid there, but he was certainly a shrimp.

It didn't seem to make a big difference. The second day, he wore his Chicago White Sox jersey that his great Uncle Quentin sent him. It has his last name on the back with the number 20 (random number as far as I know). From that day on, you could hear all the other kids talking about Ryder doing this or that. It was cute and it was clear that he'd be accepted, even though he didn't know any of the other boys before the start of camp. Smunch was also named "camper of the day" on Tuesday. He was so thrilled! And I was thrilled for him. Unfortunately, things kind of went downhill from there.

By the end of the week, he wasn't so sure that he liked baseball camp after all. He hated all the warm-up running they had to do each morning. I tried to tell him that running is part of the life of a baseball player. He still says he's going to be a major league baseball player when he grows up. Guess he's going to have to learn to run.

Mam, on the other hand, had a completely different kind of week with an animal-themed camp at her former preschool. She was gone from 9 to 11:30 every day, knew several kids in her class and came home with all kinds of art projects and stories. She got to see a walking stick, a hedgehog and a parrot show. Beyond that, I know very little about what happened. There were no pictures, but hopefully for her, there were lots of great memories.

For me, I spent what little free time I had between getting home from dropping Smunch off and picking up Mam by trying to think about our next big trip and what we needed. Either I'm overthinking things because camping trips are so much work (and we've done a lot of that lately) or I've failed entirely to get it together for this trip. At least we'll be in cities and hotels this time around, so we may be able to make up for all my packing failures. I guess we'll find out!

Camping

NO. Not more of that kind of camping. Not yet anyway. After all, we just got back, didn't we? Well, not quite, but I'm definitely not ready to pack that much stuff in the mommymobile again. Getting two kids in there each morning in time to get to camp is enough for a couple of weeks.

This week's camps brought a startling realization. My kids are growing up!

Just a couple of years ago, they were clingy and cried on the first day of camp. In fact, Smunch memorably screamed his way through every day of the first several minutes of gymnastics camp a few years ago. This year was a stark contrast.

First thing Monday morning, I loaded the kids in the van and drove Smunch to his first full-day multi-sport camp. From 9am to 3pm every day, he'd be playing baseball, basketball and flag football.I had to wait around a long time while the camp director waited for other parents to arrive so she could make all of her announcements. In the meantime, the other coaches had gathered a group of kids out on the field and were starting a game. "Why don't you go out and join them?" I asked Smunch. He set his bag down and took off without a glance back at me.

The city somehow totally over-enrolled this camp, so they had 50 kids instead of 35. Smunch, at 7, was at the very bottom of the age range and he's still a small guy on top of that. Scoring in basketball is a major accomplishment for him with these hoops, but do you think it made any difference?Nope.

They were long days, but he had a great time and came home exhausted and somewhat grumpy. Ready to do nothing..aka watching baseball replays on the computer ad nauseum...for a couple of hours.My next stop each morning was at Mam's nature camp. I tried without success to get Smunch interested in doing this camp too. "No, Mom," he insisted. "I'm not interested in NATURE. I'm interested in SPORTS!" O.K., fine. At least I've got one kid who likes a well-balanced assortment of camps.She played games, made necklaces, painted rocks, met animals in the petting zoo, tie dyed a T-shirt and watched a wildlife presentation that included a golden eagle, a kestrel, a porcupine and some kind of large cat that I couldn't get a straight answer on. It had spots, I gather. She got to have all that fun in this pretty little spot that you'd never guess is just blocks from the local downtown.She was quite literally a happy camper. She didn't know a single other kid there, but it didn't matter. She ran to join her group the minute we got there and made another new best friend. These last couple of photos are from her performance in the last day's sing-a-long. We've got another busy camp week coming right up. I really need to make sure I don't schedule us for so much stuff next year. I hope they feel like they had a crazy fun summer and not just a crazy one!

Soccer Girl

My daughter is a fiesty little girl. It's always irritated me that when it comes to sports she's...well, she's a bad sport. She took one soccer class a couple of years ago and loved it. But she was ready to be done and it quickly became something she only played with her brother. And, of course, playing with her brother is frustrating and tantrum inducing.

I signed Mam up for a week-long soccer camp with the idea that it would give me an idea whether to sign her up for AYSO soccer in the Fall. Of course, it turned out that I had to sign her up for AYSO back in April, so camp was useless in that regard. Fortunately, she loved it!She was happy to go every morning, she came home happy, fell asleep fast and slept long.

On the last day of camp, the kids had a World Cup tournament. Mam and her buddy from school were both members of Team Germany. Of course, she didn't bother to tell me that. Apparently, many of the kids didn't really inform their parents about the teams. During the "Parade of Nations" there was definitely an overrepresentation of American flags. During the games, she called for passes...bossily...she ran the field, she kicked the ball. She scored two goals for Team Germany...enough for them to win their game against Team USA. And she was a giant show-off about it. She took the soccer seriously, but not so seriously that she couldn't pose for a picture mid-game.This was probably the funniest moment of the tournament.That's almost the entirety of Team Germany standing in front of the goal. See anyone with the ball? Nope. The other team was at the other end of the field, fighting each other for the ball, with a single member of Team Germany playing offense. Turns out Mam has the same penchant for playing defense as her brother.

What floored me the most, however, was how much her brother enjoyed watching her and cheering her on. He's clearly her very biggest fan. After her second goal, he couldn't keep himself from running out on the field and giving her a big hug. It was very funny and very sweet. When the tournament was over there were more hugs even though Team Germany had hardly been dominant.I knew Smunch was a big sports fan, but what could be better than having your big brother as your biggest fan?

A change of opinion

Some of you may remember my last experience with sending Smunch to camp. It was painful. It was so painful, in fact, that I didn't send him to camp at all last summer. The mere mention of the word "camp" had him saying "NO!!" while the 'puh' was still on my lips. It was bad.

Somehow, I convinced him that a sports camp might be right up his alley. In fact, I didn't really have to do any convincing at all. He really wanted to go. And it turned out that a few of his friends were going to the same camp. It included soccer, baseball and basketball. He's all over all those sports.

After his second day at this camp, I picked him up and unprompted he said, "I just LOVE this camp!"And clearly he did! Not only that, but he managed not to lose his brand new "Rec Specs" that I just paid a fortune for.

This experience was a success on so many levels, it's just crazy. Too bad I didn't just sign him up right at the beginning of the summer and get him interested in other camps later on!