He's baaaaa-ack!

My sweet Biscuit baby is back!

I dropped him off at day care this morning, and that child skipped down the hall. He didn't walk. He didn't shuffle. He skipped! He also said "good morning" to every teacher as we made our way down the hall.

Maybe he was excited because I told him we were going to a Grasshoppers baseball game tonight.

I needed to stay a little later at work, so Jeff went to pick up Biscuit. Biscuit seemed really excited about the game until he got back to the work parking lot, where he told a friend of ours that he didn't want to go to the baseball game. I told him that Jeff and I were going, but he said he wanted to go home with our friend and play with his little boy. All I had to do was mention that we needed to put on his Grasshoppers T-shirt and baseball hat, and Biscuit changed his mind.

We got to the game and grabbed a spot to sit. Since Jeff often writes about the games, he needs to be somewhere he can move around pretty quickly. And with Biscuit, it's pretty frustrating to be tied to a seat, especially if you get stuck in the middle of a row. So we grab one of the tables up on the concourse. We can see everything that's going on down on the field. We're near food and bathrooms. And Biscuit has a little more room to move around.

When we first grabbed our table, the sun hadn't quite made its way behind the stadium. It was hot. The temperature was in the high 80s, and I swear, the humidity was something like 1,000 percent.

I helped Biscuit stand up and take his hat off for the national anthem. Then the crazy people set off fireworks right when the guy sang "and the rockets red glare, the bomb bursting in air." Biscuit jumped about a foot, and his poor little heart was pounding. I felt so bad for him. I don't think I've ever seen him that startled and shaken up.

Once we sat down, Biscuit wouldn't take his hands down from his ears. I kept trying to convince him that there wouldn't be anymore fireworks unless someone hit a home run. He wasn't buying it.

Finally, I whipped out the apple juice and Goldfish, and Biscuit seemed to settle down some. Not even 5 minutes later, Biscuit said, "I'm done with the baseball game, Mom. I want to go home."

We haven't been to a game since early July, and Jeff was really looking forward to being there tonight. I was determined to talk Biscuit into staying. He asked if he could lay his head on my shoulder. That surprised me because he usually wants to walk around and people watch.

He didn't talk or eat or anything until about half an hour later, when he suddenly came to life. Jeff and I were talking later, and the only thing we could figure was that the heat was sucking the energy out of him. That and he was still traumatized by the fireworks.

By the fourth inning, Biscuit wanted to take a walk with Jeff. They usually walk all the way around the field at some point during the game. By the time they got back, it was the sixth inning, and Biscuit was raring to go.

He laughed and talked and clapped and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch. He also kept singing the Grasshoppers song -- "Go go Grasshoppers go ... go go Grasshoppers go ... go go Grasshoppers, go go Grasshoppers, go go Grasshoppers, go."

The announcers play all kinds of little snippets of songs, clips from movies and sound bytes from the Internet to get the crowd involved. There's one where they say, "Every-body clap your hands," then you clap to a rhythm. I started clapping along, but Biscuit came over and grabbed my hands.

"No, Mom," Biscuit said. "The man said, 'Every boy clap your hands. Not girls. Girls can't clap. Just boys."

Biscuit high-fived the mascot. He walked about five steps away from me to throw a cup in the trash and got a high-five from a teenage boy for doing a good job. He said hello to the police-man (he says it like it's two separate words). And he talked to a lady in the bathroom whose grandsons are all grown.

He made it all the way through 12 innings, but it was getting late, and we had to head out.

All the way home, Biscuit and I sang songs -- "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," "Old MacDonald," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "Bingo" and of course, the Grasshoppers song.

I shared all of these details of the night to say, that at least for now ... Sweet Baby Biscuit is back!