Miniature baseball players: like the real thing only so much smaller

When my first "grandchild" (quotes because he isn't really but he is in my heart) was three months old, I started watching him two days a week.  He was the third cutest baby I had ever seen, although he won the contest for Baby with the Biggest Head. I watched Sam for about a year, I think, on Mondays and Tuesdays and I regret almost every day that I didn't stick around and watch him for another six or eight months.  That was a dumb decision, but hey, whatever.

Now Sam is six years old.  Sam is now playing on a miniature little league team. Sam has a uniform and a bat and everything that a baseball player needs except that wad of chewing tobacco, thank god. Sam is growing up.

Watching the team of very small baseball players is both amusing and frightening.  Amusing, self explanatory.  Frightening because they were so small not that long ago and if they can now be six years old, how long will it be until they are twelve and then sixteen and then twenty?  A couple of years, add a few months, a couple more years and they will be in college!  That is simply daunting and scary, at least to me.

I have adjusted, sort of, to my kids being grown-ups. I have not yet adjusted to Sam being six years old. And in beginning little league (it's so little that I can't even use capital letters for it) and sort of not wanting to hug me but being OK with Hi-5's and all of that growing up stuff.

It's OK, of course. The next Wednesday evening game is in two weeks and I will be there. Sam will swing and hit a ball and we will all cheer. Soon after that he will be over five feet tall and driving and shaving and picking out a major in college and talking about moving to Wyoming or New York and he will be more than six feet tall and I hope I am around for all of that. 

And I haven't even mentioned his brother Henry! Two years younger than Sam and oh, man. What adventures await those boys and Stacey and Ben!  Life. What a trip.

Live it.  It's all we can do.

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