take me out to the ballgame

By Anthony

Will made it through whole baseball games last summer. He fell asleep for most of the game and had no idea what was going on. This year baseball games are different. Baseball games are a setting of things Will dislikes: He detests loud noises as he has not gone deaf like the rest of us yet. He dislikes anything that takes his parents' attention from him. At the same time, there are enough pluses for Will to make the games a happy place. Before entering the stadium Will pointed at flags around the stadium and yelled excitedly, "Baseball! Baseball!"


From our Hy-Vee seats 10 or so rows from the very highest seats in the stadium, Will literally had a birds-eye view of the game AND importantly all the birds. Will loves birds and loves to identify them as birds by yelling "Tweet tweet!"


Mommy, expert toddler caretaker that she is, brought apples and dipping sauce for Will. He had a grand time dipping the apples in caramel and sucking off the sugar. He only ate the chunks of apple he mistakenly swallowed and spit out the rest, which made his parents laugh.


We took a lap around Kauffman Stadium for the hour before the game started, letting Will have as much free-range as possible. He liked and pointed at the fountains until the wind "spit" the fountains in his face.


He sprinted to the giant ball. He loves balls. We have taught him well. It is not as if we reserve love and adoration until he plays with balls. Well, maybe I do. But he truly does seem to have a natural affinity for all balls. I just hope that he can keep up his 50th percentile size.


He liked Slugger, though before this picture was taken and mom picked him up, Will gave Slugger some shots to the groin. I think Will was trying to inspire (the behavioral/psychological term: positive punishment) Slugger and the rest of Royals to greatness. They started the season well, but have recently found themselves in a familiar place: last. Hopefully his punishment was timely and severe enough for Slugger to effectively relay the message from Will that their current performance level is unacceptable.



Yes. Will loved the game. We made it through 5 innings of fully attentive Will. We only went home because Will hasn't been sleeping well recently and we didn't want to mess with his sleep schedule too much.

Check out this link to a video we made of Will. He is so fun right now.