Son of a Schmitz

Well, Halloween has come and gone (almost) and aside from dressing up like Elmo last night, I've figured out that Eli has been working hard to get into character for what he really is trying to be for Halloween: an insomniac.

I think the poor kid is afraid he's going to miss something by closing his eyes for more than 2 hours. Last night, we tried to let him get through it himself for almost 2 hours, but he just didn't want to go to sleep. He finally crashed at 3, only to get up 2 hours later. The night before he decided to get up for the day at 3, only to find out at 5:30 that he was really tired and need to go back to bed.

This too, will pass... I hope. It's amazing how lack of sleep can exponentially grow writer's block.; I'm going to bed.

Next Topic: How Chihuahuas and 9 month old babies are eerily similar in their behavior and cute Halloween pictures.

Bad Week

I hate to say it, but I'm glad it's Monday tomorrow. That means that last week is over and I can forget about it. Not saying that everything was bad, but it could have been better.

My cell phone died. Cody went into the hospital. And to top it all off, we had to take Eli to the ER tonight. It was far less serious than we originally thought, but we're glad we went anyway. He had an allergic reaction to some of the food we gave him for dinner. Scared the hell out of us, but he's back to himself again.

Needless to say, blogging hasn't been at the top of my priority list this week, but I'll try to get back on track in the next couple of days.

Halloween Vote

Eli's first Halloween is coming up and I'd like everyone's vote on what costume he should wear. Please leave a comment to vote for your favorite

Luggage...what every kid wants to be for Halloween. The upside of this costume is the immense candy storage space.

Farmer Eli. Time to plant the candy corn.

Biker Chick Eli. I think it's flattering.

Oompa Loompa. No face paint needed. Or Animal from the Muppets:

Hey coach, it's Johnny Orr! Same hair style and everything.

New for Christmas: Anger Me Elmo.

ET-li. Eli phone home.

Walker, Schmitz Ranger

This will be short and sweet because I am really tired and need to get to work early tomorrow morning.

Anyway, I bought a walker for Eli yesterday in Ames after the football game and brought it home last night. Once it was assembled, we put him in and thought he'd love it because he wants to walk (with our assistance) everywhere. Wrong.

He was terrified of the thing because all he could figure out was how to back up and it was freaking him out that we were moving farther away instead of closer. He was tired too, so we figured today may be a little better.

It took a little while, but he finally figured it out tonight. He seems to like it and his initial reaction once he started moving forward was lots of laughing and big screams of excitement. Unfortunately, I was a little late with the camera, but I was able to get some of the footage below. Enjoy.

Editor's Note: You may notice Eli shaking what appears to be a medication bottle. Everyone probably thinks we are the worst parents ever to give our kid a big bottle of pain killers to use as a toy.

In actuality, the bottle is an empty bottle of Amber's nursing vitamins filled with peppercorns for our pepper grinder that Eli likes to shake. We would never let our kid have a dangerous medicine as a toy; we always administer his evening dose of valium and vicodin to help him sleep ourselves. Duh.

Spring Training Starts Tomorrow

Ok, so it's been a while since I've posted and I apologize. My goal is to at post at least twice a week, but I'm not off to a terrific start. It will get better.

He better start using the left hand more often. Everyone knows that southpaws pull down the bigger contracts.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let everyone know what a baby Eli is being lately. I've been thinking a lot about helping him save money for when he gets older and college, and how much money it's going to take to retire when I get older. I was pretty worried about it, but then I realized: Who needs a 401K? I've got a future Major League Baseball player for my nest egg. But lately Eli doesn't seem to agree.

I've been trying to get him ready for his future Major League career, and he's all like, "But Dad, I'm only 8 months old."

And I'm like, "Well, with your Dad's athletic ability in your genes, that 96 MPH fast-ball isn't going to just appear overnight. You better work at it."

Everytime I wake him up at 4 AM for our training session, he's all like, "Dad, why are getting me out of bed again and duct taping this baseball to my hand? I want to go to bed."

I try to tell him, "The grip for a knuckle-curve isn't something that just comes naturally; it takes hard work to get it down."

"If you expect to ever beat out any Dominican player for a spot on a 25-man roster, you had better start changing your work-ethic," I constantly tell him. But by that time he's usually crawling away, chewing on his books or something. Unbelievable. Kids these days!

The real kicker is the other day. We go to the weight room so Eli can work his lower body for more strength off the mound, and he's all like, "Hey Dad, don't you think I should start walking before I worry about pitching?"

I'm all like, "If you ever want to get that extra couple of inches drop on your breaking ball, you need to work on your balance point."

I wait for his response, but by that time, he's all like drooling and playing with his toys and jabbering and stuff. I'm starting to wonder if this kid has the desire to make it to the big leagues. He couldn't do one rep on the power sled and he thought the squat belt was cool because the buckle made a jingling noise. I can't believe this.

Finally, I tried to get him to at least start throwing one of his soft balls to me down in the basement. He's not too bad, but he keeps on putting the ball in this mouth and drooling all over it. I try to tell him, "You can't keep doctoring the ball once you get to the big leagues. You might as well stop throwing spit balls now."

Meanwhile, he's all like giggling and playing with a stuffed animal or something. Unreal. This kid has a long way to go before the big leagues. Tomorrow, we start working on throwing with both arms so he can be a switch pitcher, like this guy:

In all honesty, I really don't care if my kid plays baseball; I just hope he grows up happy and healthy. He can be anything he wants. Whether it's a baseball player, doctor, baseball player, band member, baseball player, lawyer, baseball player, astronaut, baseball player, garbage man, baseball player, or even a baseball player, I just hope he's happy. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if he was a baseball player!

I guess I probably shouldn't rush anything. I think I'll just take a passive approach, kind of like Earl Woods, and let the chips fall where they may.

"Mom always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, "within reason." When I asked her what she meant by 'within reason,' she said, "You ask a lot of questions for a garbage man." - Jack Handey

Schmitz Family Reunion

Every August my parents host the whole Schmitz family at their house in Westphalia. The timing usually coincides with the return of my aunt and uncle from Michigan and mom and dad wanted a way for everyone to get together when they were back home. Since then, August has usually become the time that this event happens, regardless of who can make it. This year the date was August 5th.

The day is usually passed by visiting, eating, playing Pitch, watching the Harvest Tournament, and playing made up games. One year, some invented a game where the object was to toss a piece of pea-rock on the concrete and who ever landed the rock closest to the crack in the concrete wins. Easily entertained we Schmitzes are.

To give you an idea of how many people are actually in my family, if my whole extended family on the Schmitz side were to attend (all descendants of Nick and Sally), we would approximately double the entire population of Westphalia Metro area. But then again, the population boom would only be temporary. Like my dad always says about Westphalia: "The population always stays the same. Every time a woman gets pregnant, a guy leaves town."

Come to think of it, all the Schmitzes should move back to Westphalia. It would be Blazing Saddles all over again. Earling better watch out, because if that ever happens, we may take over as the 5th most populated town in Shelby County. To put it in terms that most of you should understand, if everyone in my family would attend this event, the Harlan Tribune and News Advertiser would have to create a special section dedicated solely to The Westphalia News and would have to file worker's comp on Lorenne Kaufmann for the immense writers cramp she would have from only writing the attendees of the get-together.

My grandparents have 11 children, 40-something grandchildren, over 100 great-grandchildren, and 1 great, great-grandchild:

Anna Rae Gallinger - The First Great, Great-Grandchild of my Schmitz Grandparents

So to summarize how the day went, here is a run down of the fun had by all:

Eating
Playing Pitch
More eating
Sneaking away to watch the Harvest Tournament
Getting yelled at for missing pictures because you were at the Harvest Tournament
More eating
Playing closest rock to the crack
More pitch
Lots of sweating (it's always hot)
More eating
Sweating while playing pitch
Having Grandma for a partner playing pitch and having her yell at you for playing your cards wrong
Eating
Pitch
And more sweating because you ate too much (a.k.a. the meat sweats)


Here are some pictures from the day (thanks to Lynn Schmitz for the photos):

View all the pictures here.

In closing, I'll leave you with the Simpsons reinactment of my grandparents calling the kids in for supper (Telemundo version) Sorry, I couldn't find an English copy, but you get the gist. And yes, while I do have an uncle Cletus, I do not have a cousin Q-Bert (unfortunately).

About Schmitz Goes Dot Com

So I was watching TV the other day and my old pal Homer J. Simpson happened to mention that they have the internet on computers now, so I thought, what the heck, I might as well check it out.

Come to find out that not only can I save a ton of money on my car insurance on Geico.com, waste hours watching clips from The Office & the Wassup Milk kids on youtube.com, jam out to PBJ Time, and prevent myself from having bad luck for the rest of my life by forwaring a chain-email to 246 of my closest friends, but I would also be able to share all things Schmitz with family and friends that might want to know what we've been up to lately.

The Greatest Show on TV

Wassup!

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!


Well, I've decided to join the rest of the blogging society. I just hope that I can find a way to stick to keeping this up and actually keeping information current, unlike my current exercise regimen and fantasy baseball team (it's amazing that I might still finish 4th when I haven't checked it in over 3 months). Also considering that I am too lazy to ever email anyone and am not real big on using my cellular phone device to keep in touch, this might be a half-way good idea.

Why I hate cell phones


So, instead of posting only completely random stuff, I might as well let you know that Amber, Eli, & I have been doing great lately. Amber is enjoying staying home with Eli (even though he wears her out lately). Eli is "army" crawling and getting into everything. His favorite toys are cords, strings, spoons, spatulas, playstation controllers, and anything that is extremely dangerous for a nearly 8 month old. If only he knew that Mattel had to recall all of his toys, he might actually play with them. We are probably unfit parents. He is getting more teeth and hasn't been sleeping well lately at all, but I guess that goes with the territory.

I have been working quite a bit lately. I just got back from Cincinnati last week and am trying to get back into the routine of being home. We're all doing great though.

So that's it for About Schmitz Volume I. Stay tuned for periodic updates. Hopefully I can keep this blog updated a little better than the Westphalia Boars CYO Basketball site that I haven't touched in over 9 years (link not available thanks to Yahoo! who removed the page due to inactivity).

I will leave you with a video we just took tonight of Eli and his first bath....ever. He was starting to smell a little rank after 8 months. Actually, this was his first bath in the tub. He's starting to want to stand up all the time in the sink and we thought it might be time that he move up to the tub so we can have an even more difficult time getting him to sit still. Thank God for the little blue chair that we have that helps keep him upright (thanks Karen!). The chair also works great to censor what he really wouldn't want everyone seeing. I'm sure he'll thank us when he's 14 and mom and dad make him watch videos of when he was a baby. Enjoy!

I know I'm biased, but he is pretty cute