Friday, June 24, 2011

Summertime

Summer camp, for reasons I don't completely understand, is a really big deal in DC -- emails started arriving shortly after New Years and by the time I registered Owen in late February for one of the camps he will attend this summer, I had already missed the "early bird" discount. Choosing an appropriate camp can be challenging as one needs to consider: age restrictions (Owen's under 5), the existence of aftercare (someone needs to watch him between 3 pm and 5:30 pm), the "friend factor" (Owen takes after me in terms of social reticence) and whether the camp's focus will broadened your child's horizons. We had to also factor in that we are lazy parents, unwilling to drive all over the city during rush hour and so said horizon's must be broadened within a fairly narrow geographical radius.

But we found a couple of camps (one baseball, one general) that we hoped Owen would enjoy, sent off our checks (FYI six weeks of summer fun costs the same as 13 weeks of daycare, though given one of the camps is at St. Albans whose regular school tuition is slightly less than my Alma mater (and considerably more than Allen's), we probably got off cheap), filled out health forms, attended an orientation session (we skipped the optional one) and hoped for the best.

Which we pretty much got.

Because they belatedly added a half day to the DCPS calendar, Allen picked up Owen at noon from his last day of pre-K, ate a quick lunch and then headed over to Payne Elementary (1.5 miles from our house) for Home Run Baseball Camp. Our 8 year old neighbor, Seamus, and one of Owen's teammates from T-ball, Jack, had already arrived. Owen enthusiastically joined them for warm-up calisthenics and stretching before taking the field. The idea that summer break meant he'd be spending all day playing baseball instead of going to school was pretty thrilling, and Allen literally had to drag him away (after watching him play for over an hour) that night.

Owen's been pretty exhausted each evening (eight hours of playing baseball will do that to a 4 1/2 year old), but so far, this summer thing is looking pretty good.

(The first day of baseball camp)



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