Good Baseball and Bad Baseball

Good baseball is when all the boys are having fun! When their skills are continuing to develop and when hopefully we're winning. But each of them have great coaches. Every time we move, I immediately try to plug them into things they enjoy. So I signed them up for baseball in McKinney and Max and Ben have the same coach. He's been such a great influence already. He had the boy's names monogrammed on their hats and placed quotes on the inside of their bills. Max's team quote is "Never, ever give up" by Winston Churchill and Ben's quote is "Just keep moving forward" by Walt Disney. He reminds the kids often of their quotes and as a way of encouraging their teammates the boys are instructed to touch their bills when someone on the team is struggling. I just love that! Mark Thomas was bumped up to a AA advanced team and they're learning some great skills. Mark Thomas did awesome pitching for his team. We were so proud of him. It's always tricky when you move and some teams already have their assigned players but I feel quite confident after the coach saw MT's arm he'll be pitching often.

Poor Ben was so exhausted after his third game that he begged to come home and take a nap. We drove home quickly before the 9 p.m. game so he could shower and he took in a little cuddle time with Bear.

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This would be bad baseball. During Ben's fourth game of the day which didn't start until 9 p.m. Max was playing a pick up game on an adjoining field. Happens all the time so I didn't think much about it. However now that the boys are older and obviously have stronger arms, which makes the pitch faster as well as the hits harder, I should have been more aware of the danger. So lesson here is don't allow them to even "play" a game for fun without the proper equipment. Especially the catcher. Max was catching and a foul tip decided to have some fun with his face. I was intently watching Ben's game when he ran over to me with this terrified look on his face and blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. I quickly ran him to the bathroom trying to stop the bleeding to assess the damage when he said, "my teeth, Mom. They're all messed up." Well, three of them were quite out of place! Without any orthodontic work at all Max's teeth have always been perfectly STRAIGHT, so when I pulled the t-shirt away from his nose and mouth to take a look at his teeth, I quickly realized we had a BIG problem.

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Our new dentist did not have emergency hours so I called my sister and she gave me their dentist's number and he immediately called back and said I should bring Max into his office. So off we went at 11:00 p.m. to the dentist and didn't get back in the car until after 1:00 a.m. Dr. Ty was amazing! Max's three teeth were pushed back up into his gums and repositioned and now they're held in place with a wire like splint which he'll have for two weeks. His teeth look good now but his poor lip and nose are rather swollen. He stayed home from school today but will need to head back tomorrow because it could be days before the massive hematoma corrects itself. His new principal called this afternoon to check on him after the attendance clerk had let her know what had happened. I can not get over how wonderful our new school district has been. She said she'd let all of his teachers know what happened so they could be aware of his needs tomorrow and so that they would keep an eye out for him.