Happy Birthday, Caboose! (Belated — Again!)

Caboose had his 9th birthday on Tuesday the 13th, exactly two weeks after my birthday. He was one of those new millenium babies. It is certainly always easy to calculate how old he is!

If you've missed any of my old posts about Caboose, I could summarize by saying "epitome of the youngest child" or I could just direct you here, here, here, here, here, or here, for some fun reading. He's always been like this, even before he learned to talk. We knew within minutes of his birth. Okay, maybe it took a few hours.

Caboose was due January 26th and he was a scheduled C-section for January 17th since I'd had one previously with his brother (an 8 lb. 13 oz., large-headed brother). We were able to go up to 10 days earlier than his due date, but since that would be a Sunday, we went with nine days early, which happened to be a Monday, and coincidentally Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Now I had two brand new six year olds at home and a fairly new three year old, so I didn't get to sit much. I was pretty miserable most of the time and had lots of back pain. So the week before I was scheduled to deliver I ended up going in to the doctor a couple of times. I was dilated a cm or two, but it never really seemed to change, but when I went in on Thursday the 13th the doctor told me to go ahead and go to the hospital and they'd deliver. Here is the picture Hubby took of me and the kids right before we left for the hospital. Buddy isn't very happy because we got him up from his nap, but I wasn't willing to leave without telling him.

You can see now why I'd been asked for three months prior if I was about ready to deliver. I was one big girl! Remember I'm a whopping 5'1" (back then I was 5"1 1/4" but I lost my 1/4" in aging) so there wasn't a whole lot of place for it to go.

When I got to the hospital the nurse strapped on the monitor and asked me about my contractions. I told her I had no idea how far apart they were. She said they'd send me home if they weren't at least five minutes apart. I was rather appalled and told her that the doctor was going to deliver and it didn't matter. I was praying I was right and wouldn't have to eat crow.

After a few minutes the monitor started measuring contractions and they were two to three minutes apart and hurting a lot. My nurse friend that was with me checked out the paper and they were at the top so she told me to start breathing through them. You know, I never had breathing practice! I didn't get to with the girls because I was on bed rest so early, then I just never did it with Buddy, and here I needed it. Stink! At least I knew why I'd been hurting so bad and was miserable at home, but since I never really stopped moving I never really felt them.

Here is one of the very first pictures of Caboose. He found his hands quickly. I'll show you later how much, and how come he never would take a pacifier.

He was only 7 lbs. 4 oz. and his head was not nearly as large as his brothers was. But God works in mysterious ways — we had a neighbor that also had twins and was a neonatal nurse who was a very good friend. She was scheduled to work my original C-section. Even though they normally only let you have one person in the room with you during the delivery, they let her come in as well as Hubby as long as she promised not to work the delivery and just watch. Well, she told me that the cord was the first thing that came out of my incision and that I would have had a prolapsed cord had I not had the C-section, and thus would have ended up in an emergency situation most likely.

Before we left New Jersey we popped up to Ellis Island, Liberty Island, and here's a picture across to Manhattan just a year before the World Trade Center tragedy:

Caboose's middle name is after my grandfather (passed away in 2004) pictured here in the summer of 2000:

And some more pictures of the little imp:

The first time Caboose stood up in his crib I was so excited I ran to get the camera to snap a picture. He didn't like that. It didn't matter that I had other children go talk to him for the 15 seconds it took for me to run and grab the camera, because once I walked in the room, I was not allowed to walk out. Great big no-no. Here was the result of the picture, and yes, it is in his scrapbook just like this because it is the first time. It's his own fault he looks like that. He's just lucky his face only froze in the picture and not permanently.

I've mentioned that Santa is part of my family. When the girls were little they called him Ampa Piskers, because he's their grandpa and he has whiskers. By default my mom was Amma Piskers. Now they are Grandpa and Grandma Whiskers. Still to this day. No, my mom doesn't have whiskers. Yes, we've raised eyebrows in public and given explanations. And we had one child who didn't like whiskers. Guess which one...

It took over a year for Caboose to really be in the same room as Grandpa Whiskers. He couldn't get close to him until he was really over three. Here is a series of pictures, along with his beloved bed bear, from Christmas when he wasn't quite a year old and we decided to test the waters:

Notice his loving brother in the floor in the third picture oblivious to it all. He was playing with dinosaurs and could care less.

On top of it all, Caboose was a p.i.c.k.y. eater. One of his food groups was Zesta crackers:

He had about five food groups that made up their own pyramid. Chocolate was one. Scrambled eggs, a plain pancake, and plain Cheerios were on there too. He was a tricky one. We weren't sure if he'd actually have any of his birthday cake on his first birthday because we figured it was all a textural thing with him. He ended up eating some, although Thomas the Tank Engine blue icing isn't really great for one year olds.

Remember those fingers from the night of his birth? Well, he fiddled with them, his thumb, and then flipped the fingers around and ended up with this...for years.

And that arm of that bear were always right there held tight.

Happy Birthday, Caboose! We love you and would love to give you kisses all over your head, but since you think they are yucky we'll just settle for telling you and letting you groan someday when you read it!

Part 3 — Happy Birthday, Girls!

If you need to read the prior story, Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

I never had any pictures taken of me while I was pregnant with the girls. Well, there was one. I had my second set of braces (first set from nine- to twelve-years-old) taken off the day I ended up getting put on bed rest, and while I was there they took a picture of me with the doctor. It was a Polaroid, and I do have it somewhere, but you can't really tell anything much so I don't count it. That's how I'm able to basically remember when I got put on bed rest, because I had those braces three days shy of one year. I remember things by association, and Hubby is stunned at the things I can recall. Usually they are inconsequential and have to do with what I was wearing, but I can tie it all back in to a date to figure something out.

The pregnancy had complications from the beginning, and then it was so high risk and there was no guarantee I could carry the girls long enough that they would live, so I didn't want any pictures to remind me visually. Crazy, maybe. And now that they are here I wouldn't mind having one, but I don't really have any great regrets. When I was expecting Buddy I didn't take any though because I didn't want any of him if I didn't have any of his sisters. I thought that wouldn't be fair. Well, I was so magnificently huge at the end, we took a picture the night before I went to the hospital with the girls standing by me and then a side view. We would have definitely had huge regrets if we had not taken those. Once I was pregnant with Caboose, we didn't care anymore and there are plenty of pictures, including one right before I left to go to the hospital. I look more like I needed a two-week vacation.

Chatty was 2 lbs 4 oz and 14 1/2 inches long. Here is one of her very first pictures, maybe even her very first other than the Polaroid the ICN staff took.

Sparky was 2 lbs 2 oz and 13 1/2 inches long, and ditto on her picture.

If you aren't familiar with preemies, they put iv's through their belly button area, so that's why you see little wires there. They are often in a warming bed as opposed to an incubator when they need to be accessed often or possibly quickly. If they are ventilated their heads need to be kept still so the tubes don't get dislodged from their throats and so the nurses will strap their heads down to the bed with cloth diapers.

The first night brought a bubble outside of Chatty's lung, but I never completely understood it. The doctors "helped her resolve it on her own" without putting in a chest tube, so that worked for us. Sparky had to have packed red blood cells since she'd lost so much blood during the delivery. It was a little bit of a traumatic first night for them.

Another thing is that preemies often don't produce a hormone that term babies will produce that closes off a valve in the heart. It has to do with breathing in the womb in a liquid environment versus breathing in an air environment, and it has to close off for the baby to breath properly. The baby can be given a synthetic version of the hormone to close off the valve if the doctor detects a heart murmur. After the three doses, Sparky's closed and Chatty's didn't. They gave her another three doses, and when it still didn't close, they had to send her to another hospital for surgery. We had two options, and since St. Louis was a straight shot on the interstate and we knew the city pretty well, we chose it. They flew her by plane, and since she had a twin they flew her back once she was stable (which was actually only a day after the surgery). She was two and a half weeks old when she had the surgery. We had one of my childhood friends who lived in Springfield go by and see Sparky as the surrogate parent while we were in St. Louis.

Normally the ICN staff would not let you hold your baby while they were ventilated. Because of this procedure they were flying Chatty off for (it was called a PDA Ligation), they decided to let us hold her. Here is one of the pictures:

She was mostly a bundle of blankets and tubes. This was the only picture where you could really see her face.

Now one of the things Sparky was known for was her 'Jane Fonda's', seen below. I would occasionally get a call across the street at the Ronald McDonald House asking me to come over and talk to her. It seemed that my voice would calm her down, almost immediately. They didn't call during the middle of the night, and when she did it then they usually gave her Demerol or morphine.

One of the girls' nurses made them Christmas dresses. They were from some kind of doll pattern. Chatty is in the first picture here, and I think that is my finger on the blue tubing (for perspective).

Sparky is in these next two pictures with her dress on. I also forgot to mention that these were taken on Christmas Eve. Let me just say that I was very nervous holding her head in that second picture, but I'm glad I did because you can see that we will never forget how small she was. All I have to do is hold up my hand like that. I mean, look at that nose, and look at a fingernail. Amazing...


I had Chatty hold one of the dresses for me so you could get an idea of how small they are. It's hard for me to remember how small the girls were, and I was there, so I know it's hard to try to see it in a picture with nothing to use as perspective. I also had her hold up the dress and one of her American Girl dolls in the second picture so you could get an idea on the size. I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but the dresses actually went past their feet, and their legs were straight.


Well, you know why Sparky was doing those Jane Fonda's? She was trying to tell the doctors and nurses she wanted her ventilator out. They took it out on Christmas Day! We were warned several times not to get our hopes up and that it wasn't unusual for the babies to get tired easily and have to be reventilated. Not our little exerciser. She was finally able to get all cuddled up since she'd been so rudely yanked from the womb.

And a few days later her sister followed in her footsteps, although different personalities were already being exhibited. Chatty had been given a diuretic, so she's even a little tinier than before. She was at her low weight of 1 lb 14 oz here. That's my hand up above her head blocking the light (for perspective again).

And Chatty at 2 lb 8 oz below. I'm showing you this one because of the way the picture happened to come out. Look at my thumb compared to her legs. They are pretty much the same size.

I have failed to mention that Hubby got to stay until after the first of the year with me at the Ronald McDonald house before he had to go back to Virginia. They let him start the class over again with the next group. He was at least able to be there through the PDA Ligation and both girls successful getting off the ventilators.

Well, believe it or not, there was much more excitement after this, including surgeries. I think I'll have to quit calling it their birthday story though and figure out something else to call it. I'll also have to finish it another day. We have company coming for the weekend, but I'll get back to it as soon as possible, and house pictures too. Promise!

Part 2 — Happy Birthday, Girls!

Hubby had driven from Virginia to Arkansas for Thanksgiving. I didn't feel well and was at my contraction threshold the whole weekend. I'd never been there consistently. He left on Saturday night and drove all night to arrive back in Virginia on Sunday afternoon. By Sunday evening I felt really funny and decided to call in and send my monitoring results (instead of waiting until the normal morning call). I'd had six contractions in an hour, and my threshold was four. They told me to drink water, which I always did anyway, and remonitor. The next hour I thought I had two. I was wrong. I had nine. I was told to go to the hospital and they would call ahead.

Of course when I arrived at the hospital they thought I was a full-term single delivery at first. Then they got me in a room, checked me, and put me on Breathene for the night along with a contraction monitor. That monitor registered nothing, but overnight I went from no dilation to 2-3 cm by 7 a.m.

Now let me just say that my family and I had decided the night before not to call Hubby and tell him what was going on because he needed his sleep. Nothing was really happening at the time anyway. Well, now it was, and fast. A fast ultrasound, which city to go to, helicopter to coordinate, and he's already in class because he's on the east coast...it was a little crazy. This was before cell phones, too. At least for the general American population. Well, remember I'm a number person. I recalled the number to the housing office on the post where he was. They found him very quickly, he called the hospital, and then got to work on getting a flight.

I chose Springfield, Missouri, over Little Rock, Arkansas. It was one hour closer to where my family was in Arkansas, and the roads were much better for them when they traveled. We also knew a few people there. To this day when I see a helicopter, especially a medical helicopter, I nearly hyperventilate. I get that little shudder and my breathing changes. All the feelings just rush back. I stared at gray quilted diamonds on the top of the helicopter ceiling that was just inches from my face for 45 minutes or so. I have that picture imprinted on my mind forever.

By the time I arrived, I was dilated 4-5 cm. They put me on magnesium sulfate and had the perinatologist and neonatologist come in and talk to me. My mom, aunt, and grandpa all drove up and met me there.

First, the perinatologist said he expected me to have the babies by that night (it was Monday and I didn't have them until Friday, praise God!), and that my Hubby needed to get there as quickly as possible. He gave me options — regular vaginal delivery, vaginal delivery of the first baby and leaving the second one, or going ahead and doing a cesarean right away. My aunt and I talked it over and decided to let God handle it, let the babies stay in as long as possible, and have a vaginal delivery, cesarean only if necessary. The doctor told us they had never done this procedure at that particular hospital — the delivery of one twin and leaving the second one until a later date — but we chose that option if possible. The neonatologist came in next and gave all the gloomy news about percentages — chance of survival, chance of problems if they survived, chance of significant problems, etc. Gloomy! You know, she ended up being one of our best buds.

And then last but not least, the magnesium sulfate. If you've been on it, you get it. That stuff is nasty, but it works. It made me not be able to focus, even with my glasses on, affected my sleep, made me moody, and in general just made me not care about anything. Granted, I was laying in a hospital bed upside down, which is called Trendelenberg position, my lungs were getting a little fluidy, and by Friday I hadn't washed my hair since probably the previous Saturday. And you know what...didn't care! When the nurse came in on Friday and wanted to wash it, I told her I didn't know how she was going to do it because I couldn't lift up. She was going to hold me off the end of the bed or something. I told her to forget it and that my mom would just french braid my hair. It wasn't really long enough for all of it to go back well, but as icky as it was, that helped.

Then she asked me about my toothbrush. I told her I didn't have one. She told me they would have given me one when I got there. On Monday. This was Friday. I'd been in a hospital somewhere since Sunday night. Told you I didn't care. I know it's gross, but I'm over it now. I'm sharing it with you, aren't I?

So back to Monday. That evening around the shift change time the new nurse came in and checked me. She said I was fully dilated. That certainly got things moving quickly and got everyone in a huff. I was rushed to a delivery or operating room (I'm not even sure which) with my aunt by my side, and the doctor met us there. They dropped the table, he checked me, and said in a firm enough voice for everyone to hear that I was dilated exactly like I was when I got there and to get me out of there. I was shaking like the proverbial leaf, and I remember them throwing some warm blankets over the top of me as they wheeled me out. (Hubby was not flying in until almost midnight that night.)

Once I was back in a room, the nurse came in and you could tell she'd been crying. She apologized and said that she thought I was fully dilated since the baby's head took up the space. You know, I never saw her again the rest of that week. I spent it in one of the four perinatology rooms for obvious reasons, but also because I needed to be close to the delivery room. They were afraid my water would break and Baby A would just come flying out.

So when Friday rolled around I knew this was the day I would have my babies. I felt it. I had been on a suppository that helped stop contractions along with the mag sulfate, but it was only a short-term medication, and I received the last one on Thursday. By 3:00 in the afternoon I was in a delivery room with tons of people. I had no epidural or local anesthetic because they didn't want to relax any muscles since they wanted to try to leave Baby B after Baby A was born. (Baby B was breech and very high up...they were pretty sure it was a girl, but not absolutely certain.) I was also on the magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions while I was in the delivery room having contractions and pushing. Weird, I know. It was to hopefully help as soon as the size of the uterus shrunk after one baby was out, since they assumed my early labor was due to this being a first pregnancy and the uterus thinking it was time to deliver.

6:03 brought Baby A, Chatty, and a small cry. Of course she had to be ventilated when they got her over to the bed since she would not be able to expand the lungs back out on her own. Things were sort of relaxed for a brief moment, and then I heard the doctor say the words, "Distress, hook, you're not going to like me very much." I then had the worst 20 seconds of pain in my life. I thought I took part of the nurses arm off, but she had gotten my hand down to the table handle, although I'm not really sure how. Hubby saw them lose Baby B, Sparky, on the ultrasound and then the heartbeat was about 80 when they got her back on it. The doctor reached in and broke my other water sac and pulled her out by the ankles. She was blue. The neonatologist had her so fast that he didn't even know if we'd had another girl or a boy. This also explains why we think that maybe the birth time of 6:10 was when someone had a chance to look at the clock.

About five minutes later the anesthesiologist comes rushing in and throws the oxygen mask back on my face while exclaiming, "We're prepping for a c-section." Hubby says, "We already had the baby." Anesthesiologist says, "You had one. This is for the other one." Hubby explains, "No, we had both." I'm glad my perinatologist was able to take care of things on his own.

Well, you know that she survived. A few minutes later when things calmed down the doctor explained that the girls' placentas had grown together on the edges. When Chatty's started delivering, Sparky's did too. Not good. So she didn't get to stay extra time in the womb. I might add that when he did this he had the big giant silver bowl in front of him and held the placentas up for us to see. Another picture emblazoned on my photogenic mind forever.

more tomorrow, with some pictures of teeny, tiny girlies...

Part 1 — Happy Birthday, Girls!

Happy Belated Birthday to my two girls! Can my excuse for being nearly a week late be that they were three months early?

Yep, three months and one day to be exact. They were due March 4, 1994, and were born on December 3, 1993. They were born on the exact day I turned 27 weeks pregnant. It was a Friday, one week and one day after Thanksgiving.

So now I'll backtrack and fill you in on all the details. This will definitely be my most personal post I've done to date.

When Hubby and I were dinks (double income, no kids), we always said that if we had kids, we wanted twin girls and then we'd be done. Well, little did we know how prophetic that would end up being — at least for the first half of our family!

And no, twins do not run in the family. I took Clomid. At the time I had the girls, the only ones I know of were my grandpa's brother's non-identical twin girls (my mom's cousins).

My cycles had always been irregular, and it appeared to the doctor that I wasn't actually ovulating. The Clomid was to make my cycles regular and to make me ovulate properly. I actually had someone very close to me tell me at the time that children were a blessing from God...basically that I wasn't supposed to have them since I wasn't on my own and that I shouldn't be taking this medication. This was very difficult for me to deal with on top of having to deal with all the feelings of infertility, and unless you've experienced this personally, it's very difficult to understand or explain so that someone can comprehend the complex and varying emotions.

Well, the Clomid worked the first month that I took it. I went to the doctor a couple of days after I missed my period and took the pregnancy test. He told me not to get my hopes up because it looked like there already might be a problem. The little blue dot wasn't very dark, and it registers at a minimal hormone level, so being a few days late it should have been plenty dark. They drew blood, called on the phone a day or so later and called Hubby and I in for a meeting with the doctor. Like we really needed to go at that point because you know it's bad news. Kind of like getting called to the Principal's office. He told us that the pregnancy wasn't going to be viable and I would miscarry, and that if I hadn't been on Clomid and trying to have a baby, I probably would have just thought I was a few days late.

So then I start taking the Clomid again. This time it worked the second month I took it, and this pregnancy lasted about eight weeks before I miscarried. I had no warning this time. It was devastating.

The doctor referred us to a fertility specialist in St. Louis for special testing and further treatment. I had an HSG test done, which stands for hysterosalpingogram, and it was not much fun. They shoot dye into your uterus and fallopian tubes to check for blockage. I didn't have any. When they say, "This might make you cramp a little," that was just a little teeny understatement. I thought I was going to throw up the nausea was so bad from the cramping. They put a tube through your cervix without giving you anything anywhere. Your body wasn't made for that, and it cramps.

So this doctor (whose name was Dr. Pineda and we just loved) doubled my Clomid dose and had me take it on different days. I took it for three months before it worked. Hubby and I had decided that it would probably be the last month even if it didn't work, because around the time I would ovulate it actually hurt to walk. Every step I took caused a dull throb because my ovaries would 'bang' against the side of whatever is in there. I guess the uterus is closest. Made getting pregnant a little difficult too.

So when we knew my period was late, like I wasn't taking my basal body temperature like some freak of nature and thought I was anyway, the doctor had me come to St. Louis for blood testing to check my hormones and then back again two days later to see if the levels doubled. Well, they more than doubled, so they told me they suspected twins. When we went for the ultrasound at just prior to six weeks, they found a third sac that didn't develop. They also found the girls' heartbeats.

At about seven and a half weeks I started spotting. We were terrified. An ultrasound showed that everything appeared to be normal, so I had to lay on my back with my hips elevated for three days. I spotted again a few weeks later, so they put me on progesterone for a few weeks. After that, everything was fine...for a few more weeks anyway.

Around fourteen weeks (maybe a little sooner) I would have tightening in my lower abdomen. Never having been pregnant, I didn't really know what this was. The nurse at my general practitioner's office said that she'd had three babies and it was nothing. Nothing turned out to be contractions that were softening and thinning my cervix. By sixteen and a half weeks, my cervix was completely softened, and depending on which doctor you talked to I was somewhere between 50 percent and 100 percent effaced.

We were about a week from the end of September, and a little over two weeks away from moving to Virginia for Hubby to attend a school for several months. Guess what? I was put on bed rest and told I couldn't go. It was too far away. So Hubby put me in the back seat of our vehicle and drove me three hours south to North Arkansas. I stayed at my grandparents' house since they were home all day. I was put on a home uterine monitor and had to check myself twice a day, then transmit it over the phone once a day. I was able to get up to eat three meals at the table, go to the bathroom, and shower twice a week. Other than that, I was in bed on my right hip or my left hip. They were bruised within about 36 hours of being put on bed rest.

it's too long, so continued tomorrow...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Buddy!

Our Little Buddy turned 12! He was born on September 24, 1996, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I never stopped sweating for the last four months of pregnancy.

No, seriously. You know in the movie Father of the Bride 2 where Steve Martin's character is bundled up for winter in L.A. and covering up in bed like he's frigid, and Diane Keaton's character is throwing the covers off herself like crazy? That was just about us. I had the ceiling fan on high, which was directly above our bed, a rotating fan on the nightstand rotating up and down my body, and then a smaller little fan sitting on things in my open nightstand drawer pointing directly onto me. Hubby would beg me to get in bed and block the air because he was freezing even all covered up in the middle of summer. I slept with no covers and was still sweating. Louisiana and pregnancy in the summertime is brutal.

I was determined to find Buddy's first scrapbook in the garage downstairs yesterday because we kept out all the picture albums when we were putting things in storage. I found every single box labeled with completed albums except for the one with his in it. I looked through that garage three different times. I'm assuming it accidentally got put in the storage unit. But I'm super bummed because I wanted to scan and post a few pictures here with his birthday post.

Buddy's birth was fairly uneventful after his sister's premature births. I don't want to give away their story, so I'll kind of leave it at that. They induced me three days early with him because I was retaining so much fluid, although it wasn't doing anything to my blood pressure or causing any other problems (I gained 70 pounds ~ eek!). The doctor also didn't want him to get any bigger because I was very close to an elective c-section based on the ultrasound weights.

My mom and stepdad came from Arkansas to stay with the girls, who were still two years old, while we were at the hospital having Buddy. They got my iv's all hooked up, and the doctor broke my water right around lunch time. After that I had an almost constant contraction for 20 minutes straight. When the nurse came in and asked me how I was, I told her I wasn't doing so good in a voice that was kind of monotone just trying to keep it together. She looked at my paper, which Hubby had looked at and told me would just start to dip before it went right back up, and said she'd go call the doctor. See, the last time they checked me I was only dilated to three, and if I remember right you had to be a four before you got your epidural. I guess my paper looked bad, because they never even checked me again and next thing I knew Mr. Anesthesiologist Guy was my new best friend giving me my epidural.

I was fully dilated and ready to push around 6 p.m. I pushed for about an hour and made a little progress. I pushed for another half hour and the doctor thought he had even gone back up a little. They knew from the first hour his head was big, so she said it was time for a c-section. The nurse had to push him back up through the birth canal while the doctor pulled him out. Buddy was born at 8:22 at 8 lbs. 14 oz. and the bad mom in me can't remember his length without that silly scrapbook, but I think it was 19 or 20 inches. Hubby and I were amazed at the little barrel-chested boy we had. Now we're just amazed at the size hat we have to buy him!

Our baseball lovin' boy wanted to go sit in the front row at a Tigers' game this year for his birthday. New best friend Stub Hub helped us out. You see, the front row people don't have to go sit down after the teams get done warming up. They get to stay down there and hang out until the teams come back out. He wanted to do that. He usually gets something baseball related for his birthday. Last year it was a Kirby Puckett one-of-one card, the year before that it was an Albert Pujols autograph card, and he had his birthday party at Busch Stadium one year, a Fredbird Birthday Bash.

Since we don't have our pictures developed yet from the Tigers' game, I decided to post some pictures from Buddy's all-star little league games in July. He's playing his favorite position, catcher, and we bought a cd with the rights to these pictures so I'm allowed to post them and print them as I wish.

This next series of four pictures is a play in progress. It was a force play at the plate because the bases were loaded. The runner was called out.




This boy loves his baseball! And we love him! Happy Birthday, Buddy!