Take me out to the ballgame...

This is the story of how one sports averse mom, who literally cringed every single time her daughter was up to bat last year, became this happy, overjoyed, excited person every single time her daughter was up to bat this year.

I never played any kind of sport as a kid. I was the girl who hated gym class, I was the girl who ran with my arms out, fluttering like a bird, I was a big time nerd with her face in a book and who took nine years of piano lessons.

I had no idea what I was missing.

Betsy is the opposite of me in just about every way, so of course she is very athletic. And not just athletic, but confident in her abilities. She walks up, gets into her stance, and wacks that ball. She only struck out less than a handful of times all season. She runs hard and fast and beats the ball to the base. I am amazed by her.

But this blog is not just about that. Because of course I'm amazed by my daughter. I would be amazed by her if she struck out every time. Because I love her.

But this blog is about all of the other people that I have met on this journey into kids sports teams.

I was so nervous at the beginning of our season. Our team from last year was a young team, so naturally I assumed that we would be on a team with at least some of the same players. But when the teams were announced, there was *no one* on our team from last year. The other New Concord team was our entire team from last year, most of whom are very good friends with Betsy. And our team was again the young team. We only had 3 players who had played last year, with Betsy being one of them.

I was depressed. And I'm not kidding. I felt like I had made friends with the other players and their parents last year. I couldn't believe that we didn't have one player who was the same as last year. I moped around and talked about taking her out. After a weekend of this, Nick informed me that I was going to stop, that Betsy loves softball and that I was being ridiculous.

And so, our season began. Our team was trying hard, but our first couple of games were routs. The only bright spot was in Betsy's hitting, which had significantly improved from last year. Fielding, however, seemed an impossible dream. And both of these losses were to our old team. It was difficult for Betsy to play against so many of her friends, and I again questioned if this was a good idea.

By our third game, though, the girls were into a groove. They started playing as a team. They started really learning how to field the ball.

This is all thanks to our coach, Herb Fields. He continued to work with these girls *the entire season.* This, I have found, is somewhat rare. He moved them around at every game. They all learned to play numerous positions. He taught them to slide. He allowed them to chant and cheer for each other, but never against the other team. He prayed with them before the games.

By the end of the season, we were playing well. I had made new friends among the parents of the kids on this team, and no longer felt left behind by my old friends. And I was witness to some amazing sportsmanship. At one of our last games, the little girl who was playing first base was trying to get Betsy out and Betsy was running hard to beat her to it. The ump called Betsy safe, and this little girl turned and said, "Good job, Betsy." I was stunned. I still am. To be trying to get her out and still tell her good job.

For the tournament, we had to play our old team twice. And-to the amazement of everyone-we beat them twice. But those little girls were the epitome of sportsmanship. Betsy had a pool party right after their second loss, and she not only spent the entire time with those old teammates, playing, but they told her good game and good luck in the final game of the tournament.

I will carry those girls and that wonderful attitude in my heart for years to come as I watch them grow into the athletes that they will become. There is one team in particular that we play that has coaches that are cruel. They berate their girls, and they are nasty to the teams that they are playing against. I wish that they could be witness to our New Concord girls, to see how they played hard against each other, and then set it to the side and congratulated each other.

It is just one more reason that I am gratful to live where I do, to be surrounded by the people that we are blessed to have gotten to know (on both teams). It is one more opportunity for God to let me know that the is a plan to everything, that I don't need to wig out and worry that Betsy will have to endure a hardship. Because everything-everything-is an opportunity for her to learn something, for me to learn something. Sometimes it's something great and sometimes it's something hard. But it is ultimately something to make us better people.

This time it was smiling 8 year old girls, swimming together and wishing each other good luck.

The new bend in the road...

So...Felicity graduated from preschool today. It was wonderful-she sang and danced and waved to us at appropriately cute times. And then, of course, my heart broke into millions of pieces on the floor.

I have cherished this time with my children so much. I have loved being home, trying (and failing a lot) to be June Cleaver. If you stepped into my home on any given day, no, it is not the neatest or the cleanest in the world. As much as it was my goal, no, my children did not create their own murals, grow their own food, or never ever watch more than an hour of television a day.

However, we did those things on occasion. I would like to hope that more than occasionally my house at least appeared clean. Yes, as I look back on it, most days were pretty monotonious-but pleasantly so. We read a lot, we sing a lot, we pick up for what seems like hours, we play, we laugh, we watch way too much TV...it is, quite honestly, my idea of heaven.

I am sad about this bend in the road. I want to plant my feet firm and scream and get my way. I don't want my girls to grow into teenagers who roll their eyes at me, who think that my silly songs and dumb jokes aren't funny, who don't want to be read to.

But God has made painfully clear to Nick and me over the past year that this bend is necessary. We have struggled mightily this past year, more so than any other that I have been home and he has been working. God knows that a lot of the time, I need a good swift kick to understand that this is happening, it is not a choice.

My life used to be one of a girl wishing she lived in a Meg Ryan movie. For 21 years I wished and hoped and prayed to fall in love, and not just in love, but in love like a movie. And then one day I meet Nick Johnson and I fell head over heels, nutso in love to the point that we made other people sick. It was like winning the lottery-all of a sudden, I could have this family that I had always wanted.

So I keep trying to remember that. Sometimes something comes along that is so wonderful, you forget that you didn't have it all along. I'm hoping that this next bend is something that I can't remember living without.

I will never regret staying home with the girls. Even though we have had to do without, even though there are many, many days that I would love to feel like I'm contributing to our income, for us it was the right choice.

I recently told someone it is hard to say that I loved my choice without somehow inferring that their choice was wrong. But I'm not trying to say that everyone would be happy staying home, or even that everyone has that choice. For me, though, it was the best choice, and I'm forever grateful to my husband for allowing me to do that, even though it has meant that he can't have an iPhone. And I'm so thankful that I have the parents that I have, who are always there for me, holding me up when I need it. I have realized as an adult that not everyone has parents like I have, parents who still to this day put their children's needs ahead of their own.

They are my example, it is my turn to contribute to this family in ways other than just taking care of babies all day long. And so this fall I will be trying my best to earn a paycheck, to help to allieviate some of this stress from my husband. I'm hoping to be able to substitute teach, so that my schedule will mesh with the girls.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy this summer. We're going to scrape through, and we're going to embrace the bend in the road as best we can. And yes, I am going to be sad as I see my girls growing so much faster than words can describe.

Someone told me, back when Betsy was a baby, "These are the longest days and shortest years of your life." That is the truest statement that I know. I can't believe how quickly nine years went by.

Unless...

Okay, we all know that I'm a little quooky about holidays. I'm not crafty, so I don't go that route, but I do love books and movies and Peanuts specials. So they figure heavily into everything that I do.

Green week is a tricky one. There just aren't that many really amazing books about recycling. Which is sad, because of course reduce, reuse, recycle is an awesome concept that I try to adapt every day to my life. Which explains why I bought 8 bags of used books yesterday. Because I am helping the library reuse. Obviously. :)

Anyway, our Earth Day books are decent, but nothing much to write home about. Fancy Nancy, The Berenstein Bears, and My Little Pony.

To celebrate Earth Day we take a walk around the "loop," which is the road that circles Rix Mills, and we take trash bags and we pick up what we find. The girls love this. This year they made up an Earth Day song, which went something like, "We are cleaning Mother Earth, we are cleaning Mother Earth..."

Now, Arbor Day is even harder. I have searched high and low for Arbor Day books, and they do not exist. So this year it hits me-The Lorax. Why it took me this long to stumble upon this obvious selection, I don't know. But it makes the perfect Arbor Day book.

Betsy always brings home a tree from school, so we planted it. We have planted a tree every year that we have lived here, and exactly two have succeeded. It doesn't hold out much hope for this new little sapling.

However, the tree that has thrived and grown the most came from my Grandma's house, which makes me so happy every time I see it start to bloom. She allowed me to take it before she died, she wanted me to have something from her yard. It makes me smile.

Oh, and we watch "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown." I know that sounds dorky, but it's actually really cute.

At school, they planted a tree on Friday, and they asked, "What can trees do for us?" Betsy answered, "Trees can make us smarter." "How?" "Trees are cut down to make paper, and paper makes books, and books make us smarter."

Yes, she's definitely my child.

Now it's time to say goodbye...

Today I had to tell my girls that someone that we love died. My sister called to tell me she was sorry for my loss. And I cried a good bit this afternoon about it.

Nick said, "You would think that we actually knew this person!"

But, even though I have never had the pleasure of meeting Annette Funicello in person, I still knew her. And loved her. And will miss her.

I can't quite remember why I got obsessed with Annette in the first place. But we all know how I am about my obsessions, and I loved her fiercely for almost as long as I can remember.

I'm thinking that I probably first met her in Skippy peanut butter commercials. I'm positive that The Shaggy Dog was the first movie that I saw with her in it.

But I became obsessed somewhere around age 12, and I began loving beach party movies. I don't know why or how that happened, but it did, and Frankie and Annette were just the greatest things EVER.

And then I read A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, her autobiography, in 1994 when it came out. I have reread that book I think more than any other book in my life. I reread some of it last year, and I realized, like a bolt of lightning-this is where my parenting style came from. I could never really remember when or how I decided to be a stay-at-home mom, just that I had wanted to be for a long, long time. And then rereading some of the sections where she describes her family and her decision to halt her career to enjoy raising her three kids, I remembered where this idea had emerged from.

Of course, I didn't leave a career to be a mom. But I do love being a mom, and I cherish having had all of this time to really raise my own kids. Time flies so quickly, and I can't really believe that Felicity is going to school next fall, but I do know that no matter what, I was with them as much as I could be. That's not a jab against working moms-I am blessed to have been given the choice to stay home. But ultimately, for me, being at home was the best thing that I could do. I have enjoyed teaching my kids, being probably overly involved in their lives I'm sure, but for me, it's what I love to do.

Annette Funicello, as strange as it sounds, taught me that. She says (and I took so to heart) in her book that she didn't like how some parents act like parenthood is life in prison without parole. She says children don't ask to be born, and so if you are making the decision to become a parent, you are making a decision to do so for the rest of your life. She also says that she was always a parent first, and then after her children were grown, they chose to become her friends. I keep that piece of advice close when the girls are driving me crazy, when more than anything I just want to give in and say, okay, whatever, go ahead. I remember I am the parent, and I am getting one chance to help them to learn to make good choices.

And so I'm not just saying that I loved her, which I did. But she truly changed my life and made it better. I will love her always, to the moon and back.

Roger and me...

I am sad today, listening to memorials to Roger Ebert and remembering how wonderful he was as a movie reviewer.

I think that what facinates me most about Roger Ebert is the fact that my memories of him (like, I think, a lot of people's memories of him) are divided into before and after. And while that is probably true of most everyone's memories eventually, his is such a stark line. Before, of course, he was this bombastic movie reviewer, always the more sarcastic, always the one completely sure of his opinions and always sure that he was the smartest man in the room. After is who he became in the last few years of his life, robbed of his voice, and yet still able to be such a presence.

I find that amazing.

He really truly embraced media and continued to put his thoughts out there, and on rather a range of topics. He was still the smartest guy in the room. And yet...

It is sad today as I listen to so many of his reviews, and interviews, and his voice, and realize how scary the thought of losing his voice indeed must have been. To lose one of the more important ways that you communicate and make a living, to lose the ability to be so sarcastic (which rarely comes across in print as well as when spoken). I admire him.

I have always had crushes on both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. No doubt born of my love of movies, and also the fact that I only had 5 channels to watch growing up, so I tended to watch "At The Movies" pretty much every weekend. I agreed more often with Siskel and so therefore considered him the better reviewer when I was younger. I probably still do, at least a bit.

But as a teenager I began reading Ebert's reviews in the paper, and I found that he was an insightful man-more than I realized watching him bicker with Siskel. Reading his reviews allowed me to understand that one can watch a movie in the same way that one reads a book, and dig through even the silliest of movies for a deeper meaning. One in particular that I remember was his review of Candyman II, which needless to say he didn't like, but still he found mounds of images to ponder over, to take the script to task but at the same time hold up it's deeper revelations-I was just in awe.

I highly recommend two of his books that I have poured over more than once-The Great Movies and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, which are a nice ying and yang to each other. In the first, obviously, he is gushing over his favorites (most of which I am still yet to see) and in the second, he is taking many movies to task (I've seen a lot more from that book).

All in all, he loved movies and through writing he made me love them more too. He will be missed.

Here comes Peter Cottontail...

Ah, Easter. What a lovely holiday. For my family, it's a religious holiday and we mostly spend the day in church. But we also hunt Easter eggs and have a visit from the Easter Bunny. He mostly brings my kids candy, and then a present a piece. I was asked about this today-I guess that in some homes he brings bicycles and such. Not here, but then I try my best not to make holidays about gifts. Holidays, for those of you who know me, are about books and things leading up to the holiday a lot more than the holiday itself.

We have several Easter books, mostly of the Clifford/Winnie-the-Pooh/Biscuit variety. One very cute one is Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells. I always love Max and Ruby and it is a particularly funny one. Betsy's favorite is The Golden Egg by Margaret Wise Brown, also a very cute book about a bunny who happens upon an egg.

But my absolute favorite is The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward. In it, a country bunny has a dream to grow up to be the Easter bunny. But she gets married, and being a rabbit, proceeds to have 21 children. She thinks that her dreams have gone, but she is in for a surprise, because she is indeed wise, and spry, and clever. And yes, I say this as someone who, at the ripe old age of 34 often feels as though my life is all planned out from here until enternity. I love my life, I love my kids, but somewhere in the back of my head there is this girl that I buried some time ago who likes to come out and play sometimes.

When I was in college, my writing was the most important thing in my life. Sometimes I happen upon things that I wrote back then, and I am stunned. I can't imagine being able to write like that again. When I met Nick, I truly felt that God took his hand off of my writing-I went from being praised for my writing to having people say, this isn't working. You are forcing it. It was a hard transition, but I finally felt that God was saying, not now. Writing isn't what I have in mind for you at this time.

And so I married Nick, and had my babies, and now I am trying to think about what I want to do with my life again. And I want to write-can I ever write that well again? I don't know. I don't even know if I should try. But I am going to spend time writing every day, beginning this fall. Like it or not-ever get paid for it or not-it is my passion and it deserves to be fed.

Anyway, I have gotten far from my topic. I am the Sunday School teacher at my church, and I did the children's sermon today, and I used the Resurrection Eggs for it. I highly recommend them-they make such an impact on the kids, helping them to learn the lesson of Christ's resurrection. You can make them yourself, mine came from Hobby Lobby and cost about $10.

Other than that, we don't do too much. We dye eggs and we have an egg hunt with the girls and my nieces. We wear our Easter bonnets to church and sing "Easter Parade" on the way to church and pretend that we are in the Easter parade.

All in all, it was a great day. I spent the day with the people I love most, and Christ is risen, and all is right with my world.

To a town called Deep Valley...

Okay, so, it's Friday and I'm reading my People magazine (and yes, I read the whole thing, cover to cover, unlike some other people in my household, who only look at the pictures, but who get mad if they do not get to look at it first).

Anyway, I'm reading the People and I come upon Michelle Williams talking about books that she reads to Matilda. And what do you think she says? BETSY-TACY!

Now, why is this exciting? Well, two things. Number one, I kind of obsess over Michelle Williams in a somewhat similar way to how I obsess over Jennifer Garner and this is just further proof that I am a lot like this beautiful, blond movie star but who is also very smart. Number two, I have been reading the Betsy-Tacy books to Betsy for almost a year, and we just finished them up a couple of weeks ago, and I have been meaning to do a blog about them. Ergo, here we go.

Betsy LOVES the Betsy-Tacy books, and whenever she is asked what her favorite book is, that is her answer. Sadly, we have been met with a lot of blank stares and only one older lady who even knew what we were talking about. So, allow me (and my best friend Michelle Williams) tell you about these amazing books.

Betsy-Tacy is how we refer to the books, simply because that is the title of the first book in the series, in which 5 year old Betsy Ray meets 5 year old Tacy Kelly and they become best friends. At the end of that first book, they meet Tib Mueller, who quickly becomes another best friend.

Betsy, Tacy and Tib is the second book in the series and it continues their friendship. It is followed by Betsy and Tacy and the Big Hill and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown. All four of these stories are available in an anthology called The Betsy-Tacy Treasury. I so recommend it! These 4 books are so wonderful for little girls! The stories are set in the the early 1900s, but the world that they inhabit somehow still fits well with our own. Betsy, naturally I suppose, loves Betsy the best. Betsy is the ring leader, always managing to dream up something new to do. Tacy is the shy one. And dear Tib is so blunt, but she never means to be mean or hurt anyone's feelings.

Now, there is a definite break in the stories after that. Betsy and I were too intrigued to stop there, but be forwarned that the next batch of books take place when Betsy is in high school, and Betsy is boy-crazy! Tacy, however, is not in the least. Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with these books, they just take a different tone than the books when they are little. The high school books are Heaven to Betsy, Betsy In Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, and Betsy and Joe.

Then come the last two, Betsy and the Great World and Betsy's Wedding. Betsy and the Great World is my least favorite-mostly because it has very long chapters and because only Betsy is in it, without all the other characters that we have come to know and love. In it, Betsy sets sail for Europe in the months before World War I. It's a very interesting book, and it has helped Betsy to understand a bit of World War I history (which I think is always a bit trickier than WWII). But then, with Betsy's Wedding we come back full circle, with Betsy, Tacy, and Tib setting forth into new adult lives. Betsy and I were sad to see it end, but luckily the books are based on Maud Hart Lovelace's real life, so we sated ourselves with pictures of her and her daughter and their eventual life in California.

Right now we are reading Carney's House Party, which is a book in which the main character is Carney Sibley, who becomes one of Betsy's friends in high school. Then we have Winona's Pony Cart, which goes back to when they were little girls with their show-offy friend, Winona. (But we love Winona. That's the thing-even the ones that you don't like so much at first, they grow on you, just as they do on Betsy.)

Anyway, I'm hoping that because Michelle Williams has mentioned them, perhaps they will enjoy a new popularity. And, of course, I have no doubt that my own recommendation will make the books fly off the shelves with my whole, oh, 20 readers of this blog. :)

And back to Michelle Williams. I do love her. I didn't have too much of an opinion of her work until I saw the film Wendy and Lucy, and this is what I wrote in my little book that I write down every movie that I see and book that I read:

A terribly sad story about a transient young woman and her dog, who gets lost along the way. Michelle Williams gives a performance that makes you forget that she is most famous (acting-wise) for Dawson's Creek. But it is a downright depressing movie.

But the movie that I saw her in that I loved, loved, loved is Blue Valentine. That was one of those movies that got stuck in my soul and that I still dwell on from time to time. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it.

Those of you who know me know that I consider Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck to be my and Nicholas' celebrity couple (meaning that, if we were famous, we would most remind you of Jennifer and Ben). But as of today I am officially making Michelle Williams my celebrity best friend.