Price... the baseball player

Price is right in the middle of one sports season, baseball, and about to finish another on Saturday, soccer.

So he will get two posts because, well, Price deserves two posts!

Price is on the Rays again this year with many of his friends. He was so excited when he first saw the roster and has been excited for everything baseball since.

Doug tells me he has a quick bat and that that is a good thing.

The other day I saw Price safely on 2nd cheering on his teammate and friend Nate who was up at bat. I think that is a GREAT thing!

The team is undefeated and while really that is not what matters, Price is excited about it. He is almost as equally excited about the eye black he sports every game thanks to one of the other player's dads. He is waiting, and not very patiently, for our local store to get it back in stock so he will have his own supply. He has even enlisted his Nana's help to grab it before it sells out again.

As for me, I was excited that I was able to sew his patch on straight and that so far, his white shirt is still looking pretty white except for one small spaghetti sauce stain from a quick meal before the rush to a pregame practice. No one else is excited about this, just me.

Price looks forward to game and I love to watch his subtle leadership skills in action.

Next year baseball will likely be a bit more competitive (meaning time consuming with the number of games and practices) so we have always said this will be the last year he can do both in one season. I am reconsidering that though and not because I know which he will ultimately choose (you win Doug!) but because while I want him to stick by commitments he makes to teams (being at practices and games faithfully), he really loves them both and I hate to make him give one up. So we will see. Soccer and dance posts are next...

Wordless Wednesday...

Nyah Happenings...

I know I said I was going to do a post about each of our athletes but I am still working on taking those  pictures (one child one sport left... well a redo... you will see my previous attempt on Wordless Wednesday). So I will start with the one that is too little to participate... Miss Nyah. Here she is covered in blue icing from the Mother's Day cake yesterday; she didn't even realize it until she asked to see the pictures I was taking...

Nyah lately has been cracking us up more than ever, if that is even possible.  Yesterday, perhaps in honor of Mother's Day, she treated my mom and I to foot massages. I am not sure where she got the idea from; they are nothing we have ever done in our house. The funniest part is that she appeared to know that she should be using some fluidy thing before rubbing so she started off by licking her hands before rubbing. Mom ran and got the lotion pretty quickly after that...

A few weeks ago at her three year old appointment the nurse attempted to check her vision. No participation. Referral to eye specialist. They didn't even try the hearing test, just gave us a referral for one of those specialists too. Since then we have had a developmental screening done at the elementary school due to concerns we have about her speech. They tried to test her hearing there. One or two times, in one ear, she let us know she heard something but really, she wasn't willing to particiate. But since then, we see this frequently:

Notice the hand by her ear? And a few minutes later... same hand to the ear, crooked head pose:

She does it when she hears a noise not related to what she is doing. And each time she says, "Nyah heered dat."  So, obviously she does things on her own timeline... not sure weeks late will cut it in the "real world" there Nyah.

The teachers at the evaluation also pointed out that Nyah almost always refers to herself as Nyah and never says, "I" and now I notice that all the time.



Since her evaluation, and even between the first screening for speech and the more intense one, her vocabulary has blossomed. Still a lot of not-understandable stuff but now it comes in paragraphs and not sentences. One of her favorite phrases is "~insertname~ mean me all day" typically naming whichever parent has most recently told her no. (We will not know the final results of her screenings until next month).

Other things about Nyah... she is VERY animated, she calls all bugs "ladybugs", she loves flip-flops and skirts, she sneaks drinks out of the cabinets and steals money from everyone's room, she loves to open the mail and while the envelope is ripped into a million pieces, the mail inside is always in perfect condition, she loves her sunglasses, Phin*aus & F*rb, and just being silly.

She will fiercely defend a sibling if we get mad at one of them and we fear she and Evan, once they are teenagers, are going to be quite a challenging duo.

She wants to wear underwear and is doing pretty well with it, but I don't push it because I am sure her stubborn side will take over and she might just be 12 before she tries again.

She is 100% rotten... both in a sneaky way and in a spoiled way.

And 100% beautiful!

No Stage Fright Here...

One week from tonight Brynn finally gets to dance on stage again and I finally get a break from telling her every week that it is not the week she gets to dance on stage. She loves being in front of everybody and her classmates and dance teacher each week are not enough of an audience. We had dance pictures yesterday. She has two costumes and this bumblebee costume (my term, not hers) is her favorite of the two while I strongly favor the blue one (pictures of that one next week). I wondered why until I heard her discussing the costumes with a classmate where they were sharing how thankful they were to be out of the itchy one. She has already asked me if I will have glitter ready for her hair and skin and if I will be bringing her a treat at the end of the performance (we did that previously instead of flowers). A brief moment as a girly-girl from Brynn is fun to see... as long as her diva demands don't get too big!

Evan's New Grin...

Evan lost his first tooth on Sunday. It had been loose for a while and it is a good thing that you do not use your hands when you play soccer because while his feet were in the game on Saturday, his hand was in his mouth. He was a little annoyed when the tooth fairy forgot to take his tooth and leave money like she does for his older brothers. We quickly figured out that the silly fairy must have been confused because Evan had slept down the basement and not in his bed. Doug checked under Evan's regular pillow while Evan pouted in the kitchen and he found the cash! She came back and got the tiny tooth the next night but Evan was a little disappointed because she didn't leave anything that time.

A New Look...

A few weeks ago I started having the urge to redo the blog. While I was happy with the old one, it was never really my style... kinda scrapbooky (spell check doesn't like that word - wonder why) and I am not a scrapbooker (doesn't like that word either). I wanted a simplified, sleeker style.  At the same time, I found a tutorial in a photography forum I belong to on the topic of blog design and while I already knew how to do a lot of what was being explained, there were a few new ideas so I started playing around. Geeky me loves to revisit my HTML knowledge (thanks to being a webmaster back in the days when one needed to know code)! The only part I was stumped on was how I wanted my header to look. Finally, L-A-T-E last night, I was able to piece one together that the whole family approved of and L-A-T-E tonight I put it all together, so welcome to our new look!  And now, finally, I can catch up on my sleep!

April Happenings...

I told myself no more Wordless posts until I had one with words and the longer my list became of things to write about, the more I kept putting it off.  So this post is going to be picture heavy but will at least have a few words since this is my scrapbook and I might need some clues about the pictures a few years from now.

The weather has been so nice lately... here is Nyah taking advantage of that, and of her sweet brother Price's willingness to help out mom:

The beginning of April included the traditional Easter egg coloring, though this year, more than previous ones, involved a lot more scrubbing of the hands afterwards. Our new next door neighbors joined in so there were lots of eggs to color and we ended up with glitter eggs, tie-dye eggs, stickered eggs, and neon eggs. The next morning the kids enjoyed an outdoor egg hunt and it was fun to see Nyah excited about everything in her basket. Who knew a toothbrush would bring a child so much joy!

By Easter afternoon we were on our way to Myrtle Beach for 5 days.  The weather was the best it has ever been while we were there. Warm and sunny. The water in the pools and in the ocean was cold but that doesn't bother the kids much though the hot tub was begged for frequently.  It was a great time!

At the end of the month I went away with a few neighborhood girlfriends for a relaxing weekend in Nagshead. It was a fun get-away filled with laughter! It happened to be "Bike Week" while we were there and that alone was the source of many giggles.

And now we are deep into the chaos of spring with lots of times spent at fields. Four kids, four teams, two sports.

I plan on doing a post on each of our athletes in the next week or two so stay tuned!