Murphy's Law: Oy with the hats already

Jacob is playing T-ball this year. He has been so excited about it - more excited than we've ever seen him about anything else. He got his uniform a couple days before the first game, which was last weekend. My first reaction: "Oh my God, another hat. This is what playing baseball means. He's going to get a new hat every year, a hat that we must keep forever and can never get rid of, huh? Where are we going to keep all these hats??" I'm actually very stressed out about this. I am a minimalist and having clutter around the house wigs me out. Here is a picture of Jacob's hats:

The only hat here that we actually bought is the Carhartt hat. Upper left is a Yankees hat that Jamie found at the thrift shop at Church. Then there's a souvenir hat my mother-in-law gave Jacob. The green one in the middle is the John Deere hat that was the 'goody bag' at Gus's birthday party - all five of the boys have those same hats, they're like their gang jackets. And add to that the T-ball hat. This doesn't include the two hats Mango has chewed; one of those was the baby baseball hat Jacob had worn and I'd had pulled out for Sabine to wear. The other was a teddy bear wearing a baseball which I was given before Jacob was born and Mango chewed a year or two ago. The other one not pictured is his Muck hat and that was last seen somewhere near the Badlands. Sadly we don't know where it disappeared. That was my favorite damn hat because he wore it so well, and I was so proud of the way he insisted on wearing it all the time.

Anyway, back to T-ball. Jacob had his first practice in 30 degree weather, and it was snowing. See:

It was so funny being there though. It was a weird rush of emotions, like here we go this is the beginning of a long career of sports - sports practices, interacting with other sports parents, dragging our asses to games in the sub-zero weather, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn for a double-header, rushing through spaghetti dinners to get to the weekday practice...all that. We're ready for it though. It gives us something to plan our schedules around, if nothing else.

Jacob is more than ready, he's like Yeah, I was BORN for this! He doesn't waste time getting ready, well, not all the time. He jumps out of bed like he was a morning person and starts pulling on layers of Under Armor and polyester baseball pants, brushes his teeth and slathers on sunscreen.

So the first practice was in 30 degree weather. The first game was in 90 degree heat with the bright noontime sun blazing down on the field. Those poor kids. They didn't even have a chance to prove they could stay on their feet for a whole inning. It was just too hot. But damn were they cute in their oversized uniforms.