At the Old Ball—Hey, Trains!

Sarah's out of town this weekend, and Nicholas is feeling much better, so we had quite a fun day. It started off slowly, largely because I'd assumed we wouldn't be able to do anything (the initial surgery plan include a procedure with a four-day recovery period). Plus, even with just the tubes, I didn't want to assume he'd be fine and then lose carefully orchestrated plans.

And so it took me until 10:45 this morning to get out of the house and take Nicholas to the park. But as always he was a good sport and had a great time on the swings and climbing on the playground set.

After his nap, I sprang a big surprise on him. In a very rare move, the Orioles set their Saturday game for a 4:05 p.m. start (so not after he's gone to bed, and not during nap time!), which meant it seemed the perfect time to take him to a game. I decided we'd go by ourselves if we couldn't find anybody, and since I didn't try to find anyone until lunch time, our trip ended up being just the two of us.

It's really amazing how different the experience of going to a ball game is with a toddler. He was even more interested in riding on the train (i.e., the light rail) than in going to the game, but seemed pretty excited in total. The light rail took too long—it came late, was extra slow because it was picking up more than its share, and had a ten-minute stop to "reboot the computer"—so we didn't get to Camden Yards until after 4pm.  Then it took us a long time to get tickets because it was a beautiful day and there was a kids' promotion, so we didn't actually sit down until there was one out in the top of the third inning.

Now, when I'm going without kids, I aim to be in my seat in time for the national anthem, and I want to watch the whole game. I actually like watching the baseball (which drives Sarah bananas) and prefer not to miss any of it. Shocking, I know. Anyway, I had no intention of making Nicholas stay the whole game. Mostly my hope was to make it to the seventh-inning stretch because he likes "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Unfortunately, Nicholas was having none of it. Within two minutes he announced he was done, and I only convinced him to stay by buying him a pretzel. There's go-with-the-flow, and then there's spending ninety minutes to get to a ballgame, paying money for a ticket, and then leaving five minutes later. So that made him happy, and we made it through the bottom of the third, which was exciting because the Orioles scored four runs on a home run and several consecutive singles, including a play at the plate (by the way, as a spoiler, they were also the winning runs in the game).

But when Nicholas was done with the pretzel, he also decided he was done with the game, but he was amenable to walking around, and actually kind of excited when he learned there's a playground. So we wandered over that way, walking inside the stadium as much as we could and then along the Eutaw Street passageway within the grounds over to the playground. Sadly, the play set there is really designed for kids over the age of five—the ladders and steps are set too far apart and the tiers are just too high for a little guy not yet two.  It was also swarmed with kids jostling about, so I let him do the slide once or twice and then distracted him. We walked around some more, wandered inside the stadium.

But by 5:45 (or ninety minutes, in the middle of the sixth), he was really done, and asked for "train to go home." I triple-checked as we walked out, asking him to confirm at the gate before we left the stadium. And then we came home!

So in total we were at the game for 3½ innings, and I actually only watched five outs worth of baseball. Even when I was little I don't remember that happening (though my father may be able to correct me). I do remember a rain-delayed game that I actually saw none of, a Red Sox-Yankees game at the Stadium (I think the pitching match-up was Andy Pettitte and Pedro Martinez). We left after two hours of a delay, assuming that the game would be cancelled, but they started it at 10:15 pm, when we were already about two-thirds of the way home. Anyway, that's just me being me.  But it's the only game I can remember seeing that little of. Of course, I knew that bringing kids to the ballpark would lead to situations like this, so it's not a surprise. But it's a little jarring to have it actually happen.

Oh, and totally worth it.