athlete extraordinaire

Anyone who has spent more than 1o minutes with Evan knows that he is quite coordinated for his age. At 34 months he is already a pretty good athlete, and his repertoire of skills keeps expanding. His latest is playing catch with his new kid sized baseball glove. The glove is a bit big for his hand, but it doesn't really matter. He can catch the ball if you underhand it from a short distance, and he certainly has no problem with the return pitch.

Tee ball is another favorite. A neighbor was giving away the tee ball set, so we walked over and grabbed it. It has turned out to be one of our greatest acquisitions ever. He can hit balls happily, and usually by himself, for long periods of time.

His current favorite game is called "hit the pitch". This involves one of us pitching a soft plastic ball that Evan attempts, and usually succeeds, to hit with his "indoor" baseball bat. I'm guessing here, but I'm willing to bet that I toss at least 100 pitches a day, probably more, and this does not include all of the pitches from Pat in the evening. The beauty of this game for me is that I can pitch while nursing, although I do occasionally have to duck or shield the baby from hard hit line drives. Just this afternoon I got beamed between the eyes, and poor Eli has also been hit once or twice by balls that have been deflected off things like the lamp, the picture frames, or the window. Nothing is safe when he is hitting. Thankfully the ball is very soft, and our living room is Evan proof.