Times to cherish

Kids. No matter how crazy they drive us, it's the happy moments we remember. The ones they mark with infectious laughs and beaming smiles and uninhibited hugs.

Considering that the past year has been very trying in many ways, I feel extremely blessed that last weekend brought many of those moments. We started it off by visiting the Glazer Children's Museum in downtown Tampa, where Sarah went climbing in this two-story contraption:

Parker busted some moves on the dance floor, though he seemed less interested in dancing than he did in pressing the buttons to change the song selection. Nonetheless, he managed to do some breakin' and showed some fine moves for a two-year-old:

We spent Sunday on the opposite shore of Tampa Bay, in downtown St. Petersburg, where Parker took in his first professional baseball game and we enjoyed our seats by the right field foul pole:

Sarah whooped it up as well. It wasn't her first time at a game, but it was her first time attending one in which the Rays prevailed. And I swear that Erika didn't spend the whole day fiddling with her phone:

Though it's kind of sad Parker won't remember any of this when he grows up, at least he will always be able to say that the first time he sat in the stands at a Rays game, they defeated the Toronto Blue Jays on Jose Lobaton's walk-off homer in the bottom of the tenth.

An interesting fact about the game is that all three runs came on solo homers. A less interesting fact is that we did something I normally frown upon: skip out before it was over. By the time the ninth inning got underway, it was way past Parker's nap time and he was, to put it charitably, the cause of much commotion in the stands. Figuring it was only going to get worse and there was no telling how many innings it would take to wrap things up, we bolted for the exits -- and to everyone's good fortune, our little man's day was made when we encountered his favorite mascot, DJ Kitty, on our way out. Sarah, awesome big sister that she is, picked him up to provide a closer view:

Probably the cutest thing about the weekend was the way Parker pronounced Sunday's big event by separating the name of the sport into two words, then accenting the first and rapidly spitting out the second: "base ball game!" It was a good time for us all, and in closing, below is a shot of him standing in Erika's lap and doing his best to block her view. But what else should you expect from a boy so young?