Go Sooners

Guess who has a blog? Let me be more specific: guess who has a blog about the Oklahoma Sooners basketball team and various other college basketball gossip? My husband, that's who, and he is very excited to share his obsession passion with the internet. His new blog, Moving Without the Ball, is wonderful, especially if you happen to know anything about the Sooners (note: I'm not entirely sure I know what a sooner is). Here's just a sample of what you'll find over there:

What, then, can we learn about the stylistic preferences of OU’s new coach? There is no simple template for winning--except, perhaps, scoring inside the arc, limiting 2 pt. field goals on defense and corraling defensive boards--and consequently playing fast or slow on, high pressure or restrained on defense, tells us very little. It is how those stylistic choices are designed and implemented by the coaching staff and executed by young men in the their late teens or early twenties.

Can you believe it? Can you even understand it? I'm so proud of him. Matt is the sort to regularly fall asleep at night clutching some hot-off-the-presses book on basketball statistics, and it's about time he joined the larger conversation online. Now I happen to be an excellent basketball-watching spouse, and I'll happily knit watch a game almost any night of the week, but Matt needs more. He needs the internet.

So head on over and say hello! He's very friendly and soon to be my favourite blogger, I'm sure.

It's Madness

I think it's adorable that he prints out the NCAA Tournament Bracket and makes little notes. By the end of the tournament this piece of paper will be falling apart after being folded and unfolded so many times, and inspected so very, very carefully.

March Madness, that is. Matt loves NCAA almost as much as he loves his family. I think he has NCAA dreams at night, unless he's dreaming about his two fantasy baseball leagues. If Matt could control the universe he would add an extra eight hours to each day and dedicate these hours to sports. But he doesn't control the universe, and he spends hours at work and hours chasing Alyce and Shira, and hours doing laundry, and this doesn't leave much time for basketball. This is why I happily give Matt his four days in March to watch the NCAA tournament. I take the girls (I'll admit, this was a lot easier last year when there was only one of them) and give him a free pass to watch as much as he wants.


There has been so much general madness around here that I am currently hiding in our bedroom (and I use the word "our" lightly, seeing as Shira's enormous crib is in here and Matt is still sleeping on the futon in the living room) on a Sunday morning, with my coffee and toast, typing away at this post that should have been published days ago. While I'm sitting here in bed I can hear Matt giving breakfast to the girls, with all the chatter and yelps that go along with it (the yelps come from Shira, who doesn't like waiting for food). But I'm enjoying this stolen time.

Some of the madness comes from exhaustion, since--wait for it--Shira is still not sleeping. It has been a rough two weeks around here and I'm this close to sleeping in the car and letting Shira figure it out on her own. But we made some progress last night, so I'm optimistic once again, because I have no other choice. When I'm not trying to sleep, life with Shira is delightful, and I know that that is what I'll remember when I'm crying about how she's left me to go to college. I just know she'll choose a far away school and break her mama's heart.

So I'll leave you with some images from the past few days of madness, and start fresh again tomorrow. I hope your weekend has been filled with just the right amount of madness!