My current favorite Diamondback

Ugh!  My post on this topic on Clay Zavada, got EATEN by WordPress.  Even the saved drafts were totally blank.  And now, it won’t let me unpublish it.  But, I don’t want to delete it entirely because now my friend Kathy commented…  Bummer.  Gotta figure something out.

Lovely weather, allergies, Stellar Kart, diet results, and cloth diapers!

• Probably, in another month or so, I will be whining about how hot it is.  So, to give balance to that, please let me express how gloriously, beautifully, unexpectedly lovely the weather has been for the last week.  Here in Phoenix in early June, highs are usually in the low 100°s.  Today, though, marked the sixth consecutive day with a high in the 90°s, mostly in the lower 90°s.  It has been so wonderful to have the kids be able to play outside, or at the park, for multiple hours in a row.  Mornings are in the 70°s.  I spent the first hour of morning outside, and finally dragged my feet inside, summoned to the needs of children.  🙂  The fine weather is supposed to last another week or so.  Amazing.  I’m very thankful.
• Thank you all for the bloggy outpouring of love and concern and prayers for my baby Fiala!  After nearly five days of being both tree nut- and egg-free, her skin seems to be improving.  The spots are still awful, but the perimeter of them seem to be shrinking.  We did get an appointment with a dermatologist who is aware that eczema IS allergy-related, and who won’t just medicate, but will test for the trigger.  The appointment isn’t until mid-July, though.
• I found out that Stellar Kart is giving an after-the-game concert on July 24 after the Diamondbacks play the Pirates!  Woo hoo!  I love SK, and I love the Diamondbacks, even though their season has been a mostly downward-trending roller coaster.  (They have some GREAT videos on YouTube, but for some reason, even on their official channel, the videos are disabled.)
• This morning was a weigh-and-measure day for me.  I’m sort-of dieting (which I’ve only done twice in my life before!), and definitely exercising, both with The Firm DVDs and walking (which, when I’m in better condition, will hopefully turn back into running).  I decided that it would be a good idea to do a weekly weigh-and-measure, to motivate myself that the work is actually producing results.  My weight can fluctuate a good 5 lbs in a few days, so the weight isn’t all that big of a deal to me;  it’s more the idea of being FIT and fitting into clothing without anything pudging out over my waistband.  I still feel like exercise DVDs are corny and so unrealistic, but I am definitely getting a workout, with sweat and sore muscles.  Anyways.  I’m down a grand total of 1.6 lbs and 1 5/8″ since last week.
• I think I’m going to switch to cloth diapers.  Golly.  The world of cloth diapering has dramatically changed in the last 10 years!!  There are 20 billion new products and options, all which overwhelm a simple girl like me.  However, I have decided that I want a product that has cotton next to my baby’s skin, and a great many of the newer cloth diapers do not.  So, I think I’ll just use the 30 or so cloth diapers I already have (plain pre-folds), which were mostly sent to me by my Grandma.  Diaper covers these days aren’t your mama’s plastic pants, either!  They’re really nice!  I have an e-mail into a lady who listed a bunch of diaper covers on Craigslist, all new, and all ¼ to ½ the price of me buying them somewhere else.  I haven’t really talked to my hubby about it.  I think he’d worry about the extra laundry for me, and he may be wise in his concern.  But, I figure if I give it a go for a good month or so, and spend less $$ on it than on a month’s worth of disposables (due to purchases on Craigslist, etc.), then he’ll likely be onboard.

Last night.

On Friday, I usually take all the kids with me on errands, and we often go to the library.  However, I had planned on today being a sewing day, and I wanted as few interruptions as possible, so I decided to run to Target last night.  So, after the little girls were in bed, I took Ethan, and off we went.

Upon starting the truck, I saw the “low fuel” light, and remembered it had been on for about 30 miles the last time I took the truck out, so I needed to get gas ASAP.  We headed up the road towards the gas station and Target.  Got to the gas station, which is about four miles from our house, and while the shop was open, all of the gas pumps were corded off and closed.  I didn’t stick around to find out why.  The next-nearest gas station was another good four miles away, so I nosed the truck in that direction, even though it rather took us out of our intended path to Target.

Ethan is a tremendous worry-wort, and was just certain we were going to run out of gas.  I had some fears myself, but put on a happy face — something I never thought I would do as a mother;  I value INTEGRITY, after all, and smiling in the face of concern isn’t integrous… or is it???  I’m changing my stance on that, obviously, because sometimes, a child’s heart needs to be protected from the “what ifs” about running out of gas on the side of the road, and if he saw me fretting, I know he’d just about panic.  So.  Happy face it was, with lighthearted chat, all the way down the street to the next gas station.  Thankfully, we did not run out.  Even if we would have, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.  I would either have called AAA, or a friend who is a police officer and who lives in the area where we were traveling;  I know he would have been happy to assist.  Worst case scenario, I could have called my husband, but I didn’t really want to, because that would mean he would have had to pull the little girls out of bed, and pack them into the truck, along with our two other boys.

Gassed up, we headed to Target.

While in Target, we ran into another baseball family.  The boy, Anthony, was on Ethan’s Fall Ball team in 2008, and on an opposing team this just-completed season.  Anthony was there with his mom, Mrs. D., whose first name I always forget (I think she forgot my name, too, as she never used it), his brother, and three other friends.  Brave soul.  I don’t know what she was doing at Target with five boys, all in the 8-11 age range, but they pretty much ran amok as she, Anthony, and I were chatting (and Ethan, to a lesser extent).  In some ways, it was a really good conversation — about the ups and downs of the season.  I unloaded some of my concerns about our coaches (her husband coached their son’s team), and she agreed that she had seen some of my “issues” in action.  No matter.  Then, the topic switched over to Grant.  I told her that we likely wouldn’t have Grant be playing baseball again.

That’s where the conversation became sort of surreal to me…  She was, in a very quiet, very gentle way, HIGHLY insistent that we keep Grant in baseball, but maybe drop him down to AA next season, and definitely have him play Fall Ball (both Fall Ball and AA ball are more instructional, less competitive).  I tried to explain that we were looking for something that would be a better fit with Grant’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses, as this past season was a great frustration to everyone involved.  She was sure that the “better fit” was just to drop him down a level.  Might be.  Martin and I haven’t decided 100% that Grant will never play baseball again…  just 98%.  😉 But, in most conversations I have with other mothers, if there’s a gentle disagreement, at the end, there’ll be some resolve like, “Well, you’re the mother;  I’m sure you’ll make the best choice possible.”  Not here.  Mrs. D. is a lovely woman.  Beautiful, laid-back, langourous eyes, gentle spirit… but absolutely rigid about Grant playing baseball.  I was a little taken aback.  Not much, because she wasn’t combative or anything.  She just stood her ground, not giving an inch.  Each point I brought up about how this or that might be best resolved by Grant doing some other activity, she brought the conversation back around to baseball, and how we should keep Grant playing.

We talked for a good 20 minutes.

The Target trip that should have taken about an hour ended up taking more than TWO, what with the gas, the conversation, and the fact that the Target people decided to rearrange 25% of the store, and none of the items were where I thought they were going to be, and we ended up circling endlessly around until we found them, or found an employee to point us in the right direction.

At about 10:00, we rolled into the driveway, IBC Cream Sodas in hand (the six-pack was less expensive than buying a single refrigerated soda or water each).  It was a nice time with my son.  Mostly.

Bits from Sunday (computer fast, friends, cereal, and baseball moms)

(Note:  I’m backdating this, because I actually wrote it on Monday 06/01, but I was having internet connectivity problems and it wouldn’t post.)

• Except for occasionally, when I’m at home with a sick kid, I never turn the computer on, on Sunday.  We fast from it.  🙂  That means on Monday, I have reams of e-mail, mostly from Freecycle and from the Phoenix Celiac Yahoo group.  I had an especially big batch today since I didn’t even check e-mail until 9:30 p.m. or so, Monday night.
• For the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking, “I need to talk with Cristi about how she mothers Madeline” because Audrey is like her daughter Madeline but… not quite as intense, which for me, is hard to fathom because Audrey is so very intense.  It takes more energy to mother her than all my other four children combined.  Cristi and I actually talked on the phone on Saturday night, but it was all about gluten-free pizza; she called me with a few baking questions.  🙂  Anyways.  So, my family goes out to lunch on Sunday, the first time I’ve gone in a good month or so.  And, who should we see?  Cristi and her husband and their three girls.  Plus another friend with her daughter!!  Not to minimize the presence of the “other friend” but it was amazing to me because I really wanted to spend some time chatting with Cristi, and I was thinking, “How am I going to make that happen?” and voila!  There they are.  So, we chatted.  🙂  It was a good conversation, but too detailed to go into here, for now at least.  Martin enjoyed talking with Ralph, Cristi’s husband.  Martin and Ralph were close friends before we all got married and our time and priorities shifted.  Still, we all like each other a great deal.  Our families were sprawled across several tables, and my son Ethan was kind of left out in the cold on his own at a very small adjacent table.  I felt badly for him, and urged him to slide over and squish in, so that he wouldn’t be all alone.  But, he actually liked being king of his own table.  🙂  I kept checking in with him, but he didn’t feel lonely at all.  Funny.  I so would have felt like I was on the outside looking in, but not him.
• Sunday night, I went grocery shopping.  Well, one store in the afternoon, then another store at night, after the kids were in bed.  I finally saw gluten-free Corn Chex on the shelves, which I had been eagerly anticipating.  But, it was a no-go for $4.39 for a 12 oz box.  Bummer.  I’ll have to wait until it goes on sale and/or I have a coupon.  But, I must say I am LOVING General Mills, which is making an outstanding effort to produce “normal” grocery items that are truly gluten-free.  They are working closely with celiac experts to make sure all ingredients are safe, sourcing is safe, there are no cross-contamination issues, etc.  They’re such a big company that they can dedicate a whole facility to making gluten-free-whatever.  General Mills owns the Betty Crocker brand, and they are coming out with mixes — should be on the shelves within the next few weeks — of brownies, yellow cake, chocolate chip cookies, etc.  (Hm.  My hot link button isn’t working — so, until that’s fixed:  http://www.bettycrocker.com/products/gluten-free/gluten-free.htm)  My husband is so leery of mixes, and I should be too;  it seems like mixes never work out for me.  He says, “Don’t buy the mix.  They never turn out right.  Just make your own recipe and make sure you write it down!”  He knows me well.  But, mixes are very enticing, I must say!!  Very enticing.
• I was watching the Diamondbacks get blown out by the Braves yesterday afternoon… and at one point, a young pitcher named Daniel Schlereth came in to pitch.  It was only his second outing in the big-leagues;  he got called up straight from AA on Friday.  His Dad is Mark Schlereth, the Pro Bowl guard who played football for Denver, and who now does football commentary on ESPN, plus is frequently on sports talk radio.  He’s also really young-looking, and my husband looked it up tonight, and Mark and his wife had Daniel when he (Mark) was 19.  Whoa.  Mark was born the same year my husband was, so if Martin had done similarly, he’d have a 23yo son, too.  Crazy.  Anyways.  When Daniel was pitching, the camera kept showing his parents and sister in the stands.  They were absolutely on the edge of their seats with every pitch, every play.  It was precious.  It really was.  Then, Mark Grace, who does the color commentary for the Diamondbacks (except for Saturdays, because he does the Fox Saturday game of the week) said, “My mom is texting me.  She says that watching the Schlereth family watch their son brings back memories and chills.”  That was sweet.  Then, Daron Sutton, the D’backs’ play-by-play guy, says, “See?  Gracie’s mom is still watching a 9-0 blowout!”  As in, she’s such a great Diamondbacks fan that she’d watch into the deep innings when there’s virtually no hope of us winning.  We did score eventually, and it ended up being a 9-3 loss.  But, that’s not my point, which is this:  I’ll bet Mark Grace’s mom was not watching because she is such a die-hard D’backs fan.  I’ll bet she’s watching because she’s a die-hard MARK GRACE fan.  She loves her boy.  Moms are like that.  Of course, just going by statistics, it’s an awfully slim chance that my son Ethan will ever make it to the minor leagues, let alone the majors, let alone be an All Star, and have a fabulous, amazing career like Gracie, then parlay that into a broadcasting career.  Still.  If that were to ever happen, that would SO be me — watching baseball games specifically where my son was involved, just because he was involved.  Know what I mean?  I am a baseball fan, but I’m much more a fan of my own children.  🙂

The end of Little League. Maybe. (And, I rescue three goslings.)

Last night was the boys’ last Little League game of the season.  They lost 13-8.  The bummer of it was that the other team “only” had eight runs, and then in the last inning, through a series of errors and walks, they exploded with five runs in the space of literally about three or four minutes.  ~sigh~  We had all held out hope until that point.  You could literally see the boys’ shoulders slump with discouragement.  Our last at-bat, it was 13-4, and even though there was no way to catch up, as there is a five-run limit on each half-inning, and in spite of their deflated spirits, the boys battled back and scored four.  Losing 13-8 sounds a lot better than 13-4.  😀

It was actually a really pleasant game.  Martin had kinship, so he was gone for most of the game.  But, his Dad and Stepmom came, which was great.  Fiala kept reaching out to touch Herbie, and layed her head on his shoulder, completely melting his heart.  Instead of sitting in the bleachers, I brought Wesley and Audrey out into the grass to the side of left field, where pitchers often warm up on a sand pitching mound.  About 10 little kids were sitting, barefoot and covered with dirt, digging happily in the sand.  It was a warm evening, but not uncomfortably so, and a breeze was blowing in…  Baseball, family, friends, all under the stars…  It was nice.

Ethan has decided (with our blessing) to try out for the competitive All Stars team.  We have no idea if he’ll make it, because as an 11yo, he has to try out for the major league all stars, even though he’s played for a minor league team all season, as they only allow 9 & 10yos to play for minor all stars.  The league president said that if they did have enough viable talent to create a 10-11yo all star team, they would.  But, our city isn’t all that large, so the talent pool isn’t, either… we’ll see.

If he makes it on to the Major all stars team, the team will keep competing until a winner for our district, then state, then region is decided.  The winner of the region goes onto the Little League World Series.  The chances of that happening is extremely slim, because, in our district, is the Glendale Arrowhead team, which makes it to the LLWS almost every year.

Still.  No matter what happens — even if he doesn’t make the team — we figure it will be a good experience for him, and you never know what will happen if you never try.

In a minorly-related incident, I saved three goslings on Monday night, at our first playoff game.  😀  There is a large, man-made fishing pond in the park in which the boys play their games, over which the road crosses.  As we passed by part of the pond on our way in, we saw a Canada Geese couple with their three very new goslings waddling along behind.  Audrey was elated.  So, we dropped off all the men at the ball field 😉 and headed back, Audrey, Fiala, and me, to watch the goslings.  We followed at a distance not nearly close enough for Audrey.

“They will be my pet!”

“They’re wild, Audrey.  They belong outside.  They want to live in the wild, not as a pet.”

“Awww….  Goslings!  They will be my wild pets!  They love me!”

😀

As we watched, the goose family decided to cross the street.  Cars stopped as the family hopped off of the curb and slowly made its way to the other side.  On the opposite side of the small street, the mother and father hopped up the curb, but it was too tall for the babies.  A couple of cars which had been waiting lost patience and slowly drove past the babies, who were huddled at the curb, and their parents, who were looking helplessly down on them.  Then, as I was trying to decide what to do, two of the goslings started uncertainly drifting back out into the street, as a truck, not noticing the drama, whizzed by, literally sending one of  goslings spinning backwards.  My heart dropped;  I was sure I was going to have to do some serious comforting to a tender 3yo heart, as the truck had certainly hit at least one of the goslings.  Miraculously, though, they didn’t appear injured.

I couldn’t wait any more.  The cars closest to me were still stopped.  I crossed the street, Fiala on my hip, and holding Audrey’s hand.  More cars approached from the other direction.  I held up my hand to them, and directed Audrey up onto the sidewalk, a number of feet away from the mother goose, who was hissing in earnest at both Audrey and me.  Uncertainly balancing on some cute wedge heeled sandals, Fiala still in my right arm, I crouched down and picked up the fluffy, unbelievably soft goslings, one at a time, and placed them on the sidewalk next to their mother.  I heaved a huge sigh as the family of five waddled slowly away.

I don’t think I have ever held a baby duck or goose before.  It was cool.

Mother’s Day at the Ballpark

Ethan, me, and Grant in the left field bleachers

Martin surprised me with tickets to take Ethan and Grant to see the Diamondbacks on Sunday.  And, yes, this really is something that I would truly want to do on Mother’s Day.  The only bummer is that we weren’t all together, but it really would be bordering on disaster — and an expensive one at that — to bring everyone.  So, he stayed home with the girls and Wesley.

I didn’t tell him, but I had a strong suspicion that this was what he was planning.  It started with him “casually” mentioning last week that we had no breastmilk frozen “just in case” he might need to feed Fiala sometime, like when I was out grocery shopping or something. 😉

Yesterday, right after church was over, I fed Fiala one more time, grabbed Ethan and Wesley, and we raced off.

We had a really good time.  It was a great game, really exciting, since the lead changed six times throughout the game.  The Diamondbacks did win 10-8 over the Nationals.  Our starting pitcher, Max Scherzer, STILL does not have his first big league win, though, because the Nats came back to tie it up after Scherzer had left the game.  So, spanning back to last season, Scherzer is 0-7 in 13 career starts (6 no decisions, including yesterday’s game).  Poor guy.  His ERA is 3.39, which is good enough to merit some wins…  but, a poor offense combined with circumstances that seem set against him have conspired to keep him winless.

This was the first game where Grant stayed focused and involved on the game on the field pretty much the whole time, which let Ethan and I actually enjoy the game, too.  It used to be that Grant would want to go to the bathroom every single inning, and be stir-crazy in his seat, not really pay attention to the fact that we were at a baseball game, talk loudly, nonstop, driving myself and all our ballpark neighbors nuts.  But, yesterday, he did really, really well.  Other than him asking me to buy pretty much everything in sight (to which I invariably responded, “No”), he was really pleasant company.

After the game, the boys got to run the bases, along with — literally — about 1,000 other kids.  They had to wait so long for their turn, I was afraid that they wouldn’t think it was worth it.  But, they came up to me, breathless with their run and with the experience, exclaiming it to be among the top two or three highlights of their lives.  Ethan said, “Well, the best experience of my life, of course, is being born.  But, after that, this ranks right up there.”

In related news, I think that Bob Melvin got a raw deal by being fired by the Diamondbacks’ management.  And, even though A.J. Hinch was a fabulous director of player development, overseeing a fantastic minor league system, I remain extremely skeptical that he can do any better than Melvin.  I sort of understand that, sometimes, a team needs to shake things up a bit, and that getting a new manager/coach can shed new light, bring new ideas, spur players into action, etc.  However, I do not think that Hinch was the right choice to do that.  At all.  I hope I’m proven wrong.

And… Micah Owings, who is one of my favorite players, who was originally drafted by the Diamondbacks, and now is with the Reds, is projected to be the Reds’ starting pitcher against the D’backs’ Dan Haren on Tuesday.

Last baseball note:  Tonight is my boys’ first playoff game.  Their team is seeded 7 out of 8 teams.  Of course, as a loyal mother, I must say that their team is BETTER than 7th;  they had lots of close losses, and… umm… I believe some mismanagement on the coaches’ part, specifically regarding which pitcher to start, and how long to leave him in, and who to have play as catcher.  Still.  I have lots of good things to say about this particular set of coaches, and as they are pouring their own time and effort into a volunteer position, I’m not complaining.  Well, I’m at least not complaining loudly.  Anyways.  It’s a double-elimination tournament, so they’ll at least have tonight’s game, plus one more on Wednesday.  We still need to decide if Ethan is going to try out for the All Stars team, which would mean another couple of months of baseball for him.  He both really wants to and really doesn’t, and I concur.

More baseball, grown-up conversation, birthing regrets, the heroic hubby, and I guess I really am crabby (and more)

• Re-reading yesterday’s post about Grant, I realized how crabby I sounded about the whole thing… and I thought maybe I should go back and edit it so that I sounded nicer, but decided against it.  Frankly, I am crabby and frustrated about the whole thing, and there aren’t any clear answers about what we should do, and I don’t like that.
• Last night was only the second time we had to eat take-out, all baseball season.  I’m pretty proud of myself for that, because every baseball season, up until now, we’ve eaten out 2-3x/week.  Our Crockpot has seen lots of use.  😉  Not eating out has saved us a ton of money, all this year.
• Last night was also one of those nights when I thought, “This is one more reason why I love for my boys to be in baseball” and it had nothing to do with baseball itself.  When we arrived at the ball field, almost an hour before gametime, I stayed in the truck with Fiala, who was still sleeping.  While she slept, I sent texts to a few people, just to say hi, one of them being my father.  Then as Fiala woke and I started to feed her, my Dad called, in return to the text, and we had a great 25 minute conversation.  Then, I went to join the rest of the family, and had a wonderful conversation with another of the team moms, a mother of four boys.  We’d not really talked the whole season, and it was nice to connect with her.  Then, after the game was over, we had a long conversation with former neighbors of ours, whose son was playing on an adjacent field, and caught up with them.  It was just really heartwarming, all the way around.  Honestly, I hardly ever talk on the phone, and I just don’t seem to have a lot of time, outside of “functions,” to have long conversations with people.  So, it was just lovely to have, pretty much, a whole evening with grown-up conversaton.  🙂
• Order the medal:  I sang the praises of my husband, who filled in the many gaps when I was mostly out of commission from Wednesday through Friday last week.  Well, it turns out he was doing all of that with a cracked rib.  Last Sunday night (a week ago), he… umm… heard popping as he was helping Grant climb back over the fence from fetching a baseball from the (empty) house behind us.  His ribs had been sore all week, but we didn’t realize, until he got an x-ray on Friday, that it was actually broken.  Poor guy.
• If you homeschool, you MUST do this experiment!!  It’s a ph indicator test made from red cabbage juice (and then bringing the solution back to neutral with the addition of either baking soda or lemon juice).  We spent nearly two hours on it yesterday, mostly because after we had finished with things like ammonia and cream of tartar, the boys were like, “Let’s test soda!  Let’s test sweet chili sauce! Let’s test…”  It was loads of fun, and extremely informative.  We did buy 250 ml beakers and chemical splash goggles, but since we didn’t use the MOST acidic or basic chemicals, it really would have been safe without the goggles, and clear drinking glasses would have worked just fine.  So, you could definitely accomplish it with stuff from around the home, which is always a plus.  🙂
• I finally have all the laundry in the house washed and re-washed in my new homemade laundry soap.  It works SO WELL;  I am completely pleased with the results.  I’ll let y’all know if anything changes with my satisfaction for one reason or another.  But, I am so tickled with the success of it.
• Last thing (and this might be good as a whole separate post, but oh, well):  My mind has been full, and my emotions a bit confused about something weird.  I have had five children, all birthed naturally, unmedicated.  With each birth, I have learned a lot, and have viewed all of the births as really fulfilling, satisfying experiences.  However, up until the birth of Fiala, I never really spent much time perusing natural childbirth websites or anything like that.  I never even read any books until I was preparing for Audrey’s birth, 3.5 years ago (and even then, I read just one:  Husband-Coached Childbirth by Dr. Robert Bradley, with which I had some… issues… but in the end, it was extremely helpful, both in my preparation for birthing, and during the birth itself).  For all three of the boys’ births, I had simply relied on my one set of classes I took when I was pregnant with Ethan, plus my obstinancy and will to accomplish it, and just listening to my body and working with the what was happening, and not fighting it, nor fearing it, while laboring.  But… as I reflect on the whole birth experience, especially as I am sobered by the idea that that Fiala most likely is our last child, and realizing that I do not want my connection with birthing to end, and investigating options of how I can continue to be involved in the births of others, and use my experience to help, etc. (follow all that?), I have been reading a fair number of midwifery and natural birthing blogs and websites.  I have gained a lot of knowledge… but I have also come to the realization that I stumbled rather blindly into natural birthing, and there are so many things I missed out on, or could have done better…  My friend Erin has offered to let me be her unofficial doula (which I am insanely excited about;  she’s due in July with her first).  I would love, love, love to do MORE of that sort of thing.  But, it seems like the more I learn, the more I realize what I, personally, missed out on.  Know what I mean?  Some of those feelings, I just need to discard, like the notion that — apparently — many natural birthers hold that my births weren’t truly natural, because they were all in a hospital.  But, I do want to glean loads more knowledge than I have, because I’m realizing how untypically uncomplicated and short all of my labors and deliveries were, and if I’m going to assist others, I need to be prepared for multiple contingencies that I never personally encountered.  So, right now, I’m fairly mixed up.  I want to learn more, but I don’t want it to lead to me feeling regret for something that, previously, I was very satisfied with.  Hope that makes sense.

Grant’s first hit

I think I’ve blogged a bit before about our frustrations with Grant and his lack of responsiveness to his coaches and teammates, and even to us, during this, his first real Little League season.

In practice, and here at home, he will swing a hot bat, and get hits right and left.  Then, he gets into a game, and for reasons completely not understood by anyone but Grant, he will NOT swing the bat;  he just waits for a walk.  Which means he either walks, or gets called out on strikes, looking.  And this is for every at-bat.  “I thought he was gonna walk me,” is his standard response to our queries about him not swinging.

He cries when we tell him that we probably won’t pay for him to play baseball again.  However, it’s 110-stinkin’-bucks (plus the cost of gear, team pics, coaches’ gifts, etc.), which is a lot of money for him to totally disregard his coaches, interact inappropriately with his teammates, and to stand in the batter’s box with his bat on his shoulder every single time.

He does have Nonverbal Learning Disorder, which is basically a high-functioning form of autism, with means he lives in Grant World, and it takes a mighty blow of some sort to jolt him out of his self-focus, and his own priorities, and his own decisions, and his own… fill in the blank.  And, we haven’t really figured out what — for him, in this situation — will get him to respond to the simple command of, “Swing the bat.”

Even though he typically most often does not “get” even simple cause-and-effect relationships like, “Be coachable, or we’re not letting you play,” it may actually be having some effect, here 7/8 of the way through the season.  He’s trying — a little — to turn it around.  I must admit that he’s behaving more appropriately in the dugout.  But, up until Friday night, he still would NOT swing the bat.

Then, he did.

HE SWUNG THE BAT!!

Then… he didn’t watch his coach at first base, and ran right past him, even though he was telling Grant to hold up and stop at first.  So, Grant got tagged out in a comical play where he tried to slide head-first and ended up flopping down in the dirt and trying to army crawl to second base.  Technically, that counts as a hit, then a “caught stealing” out.

I didn’t see any of it;  the play was reported to me by Martin and Ethan.  I was at home, takin’ it easy, trying to get healthy.

The graphic was made by a teammate’s father.  Cool, eh?  The big pic is him, after the fact, and the inset is him getting a hug from one of his coaches.

Now…  I hope in tonight’s game he swings the bat, THEN watches his coach to see if he should round the bases or not.

Answering Your Questions Part 1 (Phoenix weather, and ‘Did you plan all those kids?’)

Earlier today, I posted, asking for questions.  I meant to start answering them tomorrow, but here I am at home — Martin has Ethan at his Little League game, and I’m home with the rest of our kids, two of whom are sick with high fevers.  (Grant got up to 104.1° last night!  Scary.  I had him in the bathtub at 3 a.m.)  Martin is actually playing tag-team with my Mom and Stepdad, because he had to leave early to go to kinship, and they arrived late, after work, and will stay for the end and bring Ethan home.  Anyways.  All that to say that I have a rare evening in which I can blog.

Daja asked first, about the love story of my husband and me, but that’s a long story, even for me!  So, I’m giving that some thought about how to best answer it.

So, for now, I’ll start with the (somewhat) shorter ones!

Adrienne asked:

I want to know what the weather is REALLY like in AZ.  We’re considering moving, and we need to be somewhere it doesn’t rain all the stinkin time.  I’m not sure I want to smolder in the 150 degree heat though!  So, how bad is it, really?  Does the vast amounts of sunshine and lack of rain make up for the heat?
~Ade

Well, it depends on what you prefer.  We basically have six months of summer, from mid-April to mid-October.  Yesterday was the first day of 100° temps.  I heard on the news last night that the Phoenix area averages 89 days per year of 100+° temps.  I’m surprised it’s that low, frankly.  And, we only average 7.5″ of rain each year.  We can often go for 2-3 months between rainfall, then have a big storm that violently dumps 1.5″ in a short time.  I used to hate it here.  I really, really hated it.  It’s brown, hot, and dry.  I love the green, rolling rain-soaked hills, punctuated by 90 ft high leafy trees, with their roots soaking in a sparkling stream, all of which are in short supply in Arizona.  However, I don’t hate it any more.  Actually, I’m liking it better and better in Arizona, each year.  We have a vast complexity of life, both flora and fauna, and such striking vistas, and wide, clear blue skies…  Plus, travel an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and you’re in the mountains and cooler temps.  I have lived in the heart of the city (or near it), and on the fringes, and I like it on the fringes.  The scenery is much better.  🙂  In cooler climes, folks have to stay indoors nearly all winter.  Here, you have to stay indoors nearly all summer.  The summer days are literally like a blast furnace.  It’s too hot to roll down the window of your car as you drive.  It’s too hot for a walk, even at night, where it can stay over 100° even past 10:00 at night.  The norm is to travel from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned car to the pool or air-conditioned other place, and back home.  Kids don’t play outside in the summer, unless you have a pool.  (We don’t.)  Or, if I do send the kids out to play, it’s early in the morning (like around 8:00) and they have to come in 20 minutes later, because they’re drenched with sweat because it’s already over 100° at 8:20 a.m.  So, you have to get really creative with indoor things to do for kids here in the summer, especially if you aren’t into video games and vegeing out in front of the t.v., like we’re not.  But… there are lots of things to like about the Phoenix area.  There are TONS of hiking opportunities, all year ’round, both within the city, and in the area around it.  As far as cities go, it’s really not claustrophobic;  it’s spread out (which is both good and bad — urban sprawl and all that).  We have lots of amenities, some great sports teams, a fairly good arts scene, pretty much any store you could ever want — I hardly buy anything online except for books!  I don’t need to, because it’s all right around the corner.  Right now, it’s uber-affordable to buy a house in the Phoenix area!  The market has tanked, which is great for first-time home buyers.  Some friends of mine had a house next door to them just sell for $45K.  Granted, it’s an extreme fixer-upper.  But, you can get a nice house for $100K right now.

So, that’s more than you asked, as I review your question, which was ~ahem~ just about weather.  Sorry about that.

Jessie asked:

Did you plan to have “all” those kids?  Lol!  I only put it that way (being a mom of 4 so far myself) because that’s the way people ask me! 🙂

Sort of.  Before we got married, my husband and I agreed we wanted 3-5 kids.  But, then, I had ONE, and suddenly extended grace to all the parents of only children, of whom I had previously stood in judgment.  It was hard, and I was done.  Fifteen months later, unplanned, we got pregnant with Grant.  That was a shock, but mostly OK, especially since Grant was such an easy baby.  Fifteen months after Grant was born, I got pregnant with Wesley, which was NOT OK.  I wept.  I didn’t understand what God was doing to me.  I was very ill, and getting worse.  Not many people knew about it, except my husband, because I was embarrassed, because “all” I’d been diagnosed with was chronic fatigue syndrome, moderate depression, chronic bone pain, intersticial cystitis, and a few other things, but none life-threatening.  Plus, in the 2.5 year search I had undertaken to find out what was wrong with me, I had twice been called a hypochondriac by two different doctors, which was humiliating.  And, I had been raised with a paradigm that Christians didn’t get depressed, so I felt guilty or something for that part of it.  So, I didn’t share much with others about how poorly I was doing.  And, at the height of me feeling like I was barely keeping my nose above water with regards to my self, let alone my husband, my 1yo and my 3yo, I got pregnant.  I really wept.  I had to make a conscious decision to trust God because this was a child He had decided to give us, so I had to trust that it would be the right child for our family, and would have a special, specific purpose in our lives.  As it turns out, Wesley’s diagnosis of celiac disease is what led to my own diagnosis of the same, and I really feel like Wesley saved my life, because celiac disease was the core of my problem, and all the other health issues I was having were symptoms of celiac disease.  So…  After I got healed up, and once my three boys grew just a little, I started wanting another child;  our family did not feel complete.  For a while, Martin wasn’t willing;  my health was a great concern to him;  he didn’t think I could handle another child.  But, eventually, he said to me with a grin, “Wanna try for #4?”  And, we did.  🙂  When Wesley was 4.5yo, Audrey was born.  Then, it felt like we had a set of siblings with the three boys, and little baby Audrey dangling off at the end, with no sister, nor any sibling really close in age to her.  So, we decided to try for one more child, and for the first time, were really hoping for a specific gender — a girl.  And, God said, “OK!” and Fiala was born when Audrey was 2.5yo.  So…. it was like all the kids were planned, then they weren’t, then they were.  😀  And in the end, we’re back to our pre-marriage plan of 3-5.  It is uncommon to have five children and not be Catholic, or LDS, or QF, or have it be an accident.  But, five it is, all planned for, more or less, and we’re really pleased with ’em!

Maybe I overreacted.

We typically don’t do school on Fridays;  it is reserved for trips to the library, hikes, and various errands.  However, I had none of that planned today, so — to the boys’ utmost shock — I decided to do some school with them this morning.  They weren’t really pleased.  Well, that’s not quite true.  Wesley and Ethan didn’t mind;  after all, it was only read-aloud type stuff we were doing;  no seatwork.  Grant, however, copped an attitude, which I did my best to encourage him to control.

However, towards the end of a book we were reading, I asked Grant a question, and he responded with a blank look and, “I wasn’t listening because I don’t care.”

Hm.

I can’t say I flipped out, because there was no yelling involved.  But, I did let him know that that sort of response indicates that he was wasting his time and mine, and had absolutely no appreciation for the investment I was choosing to make in him, instead of doing other things I could be doing, like the mountain of dishes.

I know this is sounding like a broken record, but because of baseball, and because of our budget-crunch which doesn’t allow for eating out, when the morning’s school is over, and lunch is over, and everyone is down for a quiet time or nap, I typically do a lot of cooking as fast as I can, leaving a wreck in my wake, then run out the door to practice or a game, then get home late.  We then all eat as fast as we can, then flop into bed, or I sink into the couch at 10:30, with absolutely  no energy or motivation left to clean the kitchen.

In a family of seven (six eaters, though), dishes can stack up awfully fast that way.  Yesterday, I ran the dishwasher twice, but there were STILL dishes, mostly the ones that need to be handwashed.

So, I told Grant that this morning, I had made a conscious decision to do school with them, instead of tackling the dishes.  I then told him that in order to help him appreciate my time and efforts, he was going to wash the dishes for me.

“But, I’ve never washed dishes!  I don’t know how!” came the predictable response.

“Well, you’re nine.  It’s time you learn.”

And, he did.

I did school with Wesley, coming in every 20 minutes or so to check on Grant, and dry and put away the ones he’d done.  The ones, that is, that didn’t need to go back into the sink because of grime or grease.

It took him a good hour and a half.

Part of me thinks that it’s likely unreasonable to expect a 9yo to really appreciate what his mother does.  So, maybe I did overreact…

But, he IS nine, and he DOES need to know how to do the dishes.