the new sport.

Around here we basically do a few sports.

The girls swim and do ballet; The boys swim, play basketball and do flag football.

Parker played t-ball when he was 5 & 6 years old, but he found standing out on the field to be boring. So we stopped playing baseball.

One time, quite a while back, we were fooling around in the backyard and daddy began throwing some pitches. Ethan was about 3 years old and had never played any baseball before, but that did not seem to matter because he was really able to get a hold of the ball and impressed everyone. He seemed to have a natural talent. This little tale has been told and re-told numerous times and Ethan loves to hear it. But the truth is-- we never signed him up to play after that. It's only been football, basketball and swimming. So this year, in between winter and summer basketball, he decided that he really wanted to try baseball out. Parker was a little hesitant since he knew he'd be jumping back into something that he hadn't played in years, knowing he'd be a little bit behind, but he opted to go for it also. I'm proud of him for that.

But wow! Baseball is expensive. Especially when you haven't been playing and don't have any of the stuff! It's not like the other two sports where they only needed football cleats or basketball sneakers.

For baseball, you need the whole get up. Crazy. That's not including the fact that when you go to look at baseball mitts, they start checking out the shiny helmets and cool looking bats. I thought they still used wooden ones (until my husband told me that it's only the pros who use wood). Then they need their own batting gloves too... My husband played a lot of baseball when he was younger and said he'd never owned a pair ( he played shortstop and pitched through his high school career in New Hampshire where it was still really cold in the spring time...), but that was 25 years ago. But he gave in and got both of them a pair. We ended up dropping a bundle and we didn't even buy top of the line anything; we were searching for bargains.

And all that still didn't take into consideration their registration fees, the mandatory fundraiser and the snack bar shifts that you can buy out. Ouch. We ended up registering to play in the Navy base league mainly because it meant we didn't have to participate in a lame raffle ticket fundraiser. Whew! And the uniforms are not even real jerseys-- just a baseball t-shirt. Lame. I haven't said anything to the boys about all these thoughts in my mind-- only you and my husband. He feels the same way, I think.

But...I may change my thinking once the games start. I'll let you know if I become a baseball Mom. For now, I'm still liking the other sports a bit more.