There are times as a father when you wonder if you are cutting it--you wonder if you are providing the love, support, encouragement, discipline, etc. to help your child grow to be the person you hope he or she becomes. In September, when Andrew was already 8 months, I found myself in a sudden panic as I realized that I may have already postponed Andrew's development due to a serious oversight on my behalf. As Andrew and I played, I suddenly realized that there were no balls of any kind in his preferred choice of toys--in fact, there were no Andrew-sized balls in the house at all! Terror! Panic! Embarrassment! What kind of father was I? I had faltered in my responsibility to maintain the proper ball to other toy ratio for nearly 8 months. I quickly repented and went to work. What I missed in the first 8 months, we have made up for since. Andrew and I took a special father-son trip to Walmart the very week of my realization and purchased a basketball and a football. Since then, Andrew has grown fond of any and every ball he lays is eyes on. The most repeated word in his vocabulary is "ball" and he rarely goes for more than a couple of minutes without a ball in his hand. Fathers, I speak to you. Learn from my mistake. Luckily, my story has a happy ending, but another couple of months and it may have been too late. Don't let it happen to you. "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
Below are a couple of pics of Andrew and me outside the Lincoln Saltdogs (local independent league baseball team) stadium. Andrew spotted these balls from 200 yards as we walked through the parking lot toward the ticket gates. He couldn't stop saying ball until we got up close enough to touch them.
9 comments:
Welcome to the blog world Mike!! You and your twin are still the same--neither of you blog! But both of your boys LOVE balls. It's a good thing!
ha! mike, i love it! i am proud to say that travis has been a good new daddy encouraging balls into calvin's toy repertoire!
Mike - I love your post. It made both Matt and I laugh. I'm glad you clued into the balls. Boys need it. I think our little Matthew's most frequent word is "ball". He pants until he gets it. Good work.
Mike! You are so funny! At first, I was really wondering what serious concern you had....then, I realized how serious it was.....his dad had deprived him!!! Ha ha!! That's cute!! Way to get "on the ball".
I think Mike did a great job with his first post! Your thoughts on this serious topic made me laugh. I think you should blog more often!
Mike, way to go! You are a great blogger. It is very important that your boy loves ball. Andrew is such a cutie.
Ha! Ha! Ha! I think this is sooooo funny and I LOVE the picture of Andrew wearing your hat. soooooo cute. Yeah, andy has a really hard time when he comes home to Ethan wearing girl dress ups. He keeps saying I really shouldn't allow it and ethan needs more balls in his life!!
Glad to see of all the balls he could pick he chose the right balls to play with...baseballs!
Too bad mike...he is always going to be behind now that you have failed to provide him with the wrong amount of balls during his first eight months. You know what they say about little kids that don't get footballs and basketballs early enough in life...they have to enter kindergarten a year late and who knows after that. His development has completely been throughen off. He is behins the eight ball.
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