Musical beds (without the music)

Owen has suddenly become very scared of sleeping in his bed. He cries and hides under his blanket at bedtime. He looks like a Winnie the Pooh version of Cousin It from the Munsters...only, I don't think Cousin It shook and wailed like it was scared to death. The first couple of times it happened, I thought, "This can't last too long. I'll just let him get tired, he'll stop and go to sleep." Right! Twenty minutes later, the boy would still be under the blanket crying, only now he was a big sweaty, snotty mess.

My easy solution? Take the boy to bed with me so he can relax and go to sleep...only this backfires and I fall asleep too. Not cool when I had planned on working after the boys were in bed.

Ok, obviously that didn't work, so I tried letting him sleep with a brother. Logically the safest place would be in bottom bunk with Dylan. Not from Dylan's perspective, though, because I get, "I don't like Owey!" when I ask Deets if O can sleep with him. He doesn't just say it, he yells it with this horrible scrunched up face...and he wonders why Owen wants to beat the crap out of him and take his stuff on a daily basis, but that's another blog entry I'd rather not go into.

That leaves only one other alternative and that is top bunk with Brandon. Brandon is far more nurturing and tolerant of his baby brother, so I knew Brandon wouldn't mind having Owen to cuddle in the middle of the night. It was the top bunk thing that had me worried. "But then again, Owen never gets out of bed on his own", I reason. With that one thought I lamely convinced myself to allow the "slumber party" in top bunk because I didn't know what else to do. I just figured that after all my boys were asleep, I would climb into top bunk and carry all 35 pounds of that boulder back to his bed. Well, that didn't work out either, because Owen would wake up at 2am shivering and crying under his blanket until I came to get him. So now I just let him stay with Brandon all night, and he usually doesn't wake up until morning. When he does, he calls me to come get him, because, after all, he's still the baby and he needs Mommy's arms and warmth first thing in the morning. It won't be long before I no longer have warm snugly little bodies climbing into my bed, so I relish every moment I do have it.

Diamondbacks win their first game!

Brandon had such a great first game. He was really paying attention while he was in the outfield, which is saying a lot about our chronic daydreamer. He may have struck out the first time he was at bat, but he nailed it the second time and got on base. When he turned around to face the crowd from first base, he was smiling so big my heart was just bursting. Sorry, but I am a mom, and can't help myself. When he got to home plate, he just stood there smiling until coach called him into the dugout. Oh, and he was extra cute all geared up to play catcher. He was killing us all that he practically walked the ball to the pitcher every time. My sweet boy didn't know what he was doing. He'll know what to do next time, I'm sure. The whole team did so great. It really was a lot of fun to watch.

River Park Youth Baseball Opening Day

I LOVE River Park Youth Baseball's Opening Day! It's such an overly sweet bite of Americana, you can't help but take another bite. I love seeing all the teams in their brand new uniforms piled into trucks, trailers and even limos (don't get me started on that). Each kid has a huge bag of candy to throw to (and sometimes at) the spectators along the parade route. Each face in the parade is a smiling beam of sunshine. Unless, of course, you were pelted with a lollipop. Then you may think otherwise about that smiling face. I always wonder how many blocks they make it before they run out of candy, because they inevitably come back they way went. Only this time they are holding out their hats asking the crowd to throw candy to them.

Once the trucks, trailers and limos are parked, the teams come pouring onto Ciavarella Field for the opening ceremonies: hats off for the national anthem, teams are introduced, thanks are made to the MANY volunteers, special guests are introduced and finally the first pitch is thrown to officially open the season. While all of this is going on, you look around and see this beautiful, well maintained field covered in a rainbow of jerseys and mostly crisp white pants. 350 or so kids who just want to play baseball. Tiny t-ballers all the way up to the majors. It really is an amazing sight. I don't know what it is about the whole experience that makes me feel so nostalgic. There just seems to be something special about this sport and the people in our neighborhood who support it.

Oh! This is what it's like to have friends!

Maren Hanchen and Dylan loving the jellies at Monterey Bay Aquarium

We spent this last weekend with our friends, the Hanchens. Between the two families we had 6 kids to entertain. It's always so much work with just our kids, I was afraid 6 kids just might kill me. I couldn't be more wrong. The boys had the time of their lives with the girls. They spent the whole weekend playing with the girls. Owen was Maren's shadow practically the whole weekend. She was so patient and kind to Owen, that he couldn't leave her alone. Dylan and McKenna hung out together a bit, which was nice since they are about the same age. Brandon played with everyone. A highlight of the weekend wasn't the Monterey Bay Aquarium (2 kids asked if we could go home within 1o minutes) or the beach with all the treasures to be collected in buckets and hauled home just to sit in the same buckets in the garage never to be seen again...no, it had to be running around the yard capturing and innocently tormenting lizard after lizard. I couldn't watch the kids with the lizards for more than five minutes (sorry, no pics of this). I kept wincing thinking that this next moment one of the little critters was going to become road kill from over zealous feet. At least the lizards were able to "escape" from their enclosure at night. We parents felt so bad for the little critters, they had to be released from their pink plastic box of a home. Poor things were probably too stunned to move more than a couple feet that night.

When the kids were finally in bed at night, we would have some adult time around the fire outside. It came up that the last time the 4 of us were in Santa Cruz together was our 1st wedding anniversary in 2002. It doesn't seem possible that it's been almost 8 years. Back before children. I think that's when everything changed for us. Children. Our own and everyone else's kids. The life we were used to became irrelevant. The kids became the focus, so we threw ourselves into it as we should have. But at the same time, we stopped making time for our friends and didn't realize what we lost until this last weekend. Time to reorganize our life and make time for the people who we have unintentionally shelved but have always been important to us.

Maren and Brandon found many treasure washed up on the beach. Here they are collecting shells and rocks with Maren's dad, Scott Hanchen, at Rio Del Mar Beach.