BillandBob.com

When I talked about waiting until next season to take the girls to a Rice baseball game, Cindy urged us to go ahead this year. She said that even if we only made it through an inning or two, it would be good experience. Susan thought so, too. So when the Owl Club offered free tickets to graduate program alumni, I requested a few for Saturday’s game against UH.

The game started at 1:30 pm, which is about when Sam and Cate usually start their afternoon nap. But they had a good late morning nap, so after midday nursing and bottles, we filled some water bottles, packed up the diaper bag, loaded the Bumbleride into the car, and headed out. We got to Reckling around 2:30 pm, collected our tickets at Will Call, and trekked to the Outfield Hill.

Beyond that, I have no idea what inning we arrived during, how many at-bats occurred while we were there, how well Rice played, or what was the final score. What I remember:

• It was sunny and HOT with no shade available on the hill
• Cate finally passed a painful, cereal-delayed poo and cried for a long while before I figured out she wasn’t crying because it was too hot,
• We ran into a Houston Endowment grant officer, Elizabeth (Graves) Love (’96), shared stories about kids who don’t sleep well, and snapped a few photos,
• I lost Cate’s Binky, and
• it was hot. Did I mention it was too hot?

We only stayed an hour before we decided to call it a day. On the way out, we stopped in the nice, air-conditioned “Family Restroom” to change Cate’s diaper, which made her a lot happier. And when we got home, I found the missing Binky in my pocket, where Rob told me it belongs. I’m not sure yet what to do differently next time to make a game outing more enjoyable for the girls, but I’m glad we went.

When we got home, instead of starting the afternoon bottles late, we skipped right to dinner-time nursing, and moved the girls directly through bottles to a much earlier-than-usual 6:30 pm bedtime. They didn’t sleep any better (read more contiguously) than usual, but they did mostly sleep, which let Bill and me enjoy a quiet dinner and early bedtime ourselves. Bedtime was followed by the usual series of girl-reflux awakenings, which we took turns covering, but there were a lot of them and Sunday morning found us really, really tired. It’s possible that the girls had a rougher-than-sometimes night because of the disruptions to their schedule during the day, but it’s hard to know.