I had such a wonderful relaxing weekend. I started off by getting a massage after work on Friday and then Saturday I went and got a mani/pedi. I figured I should take the last weekend (hopefully) I had babyless and get pampered a little.

Saturday was such a beautiful day and I had to go out to shoot some photos for my final photography project. I decided to head down to the marina to take pictures. I snuck onto the docs with some people who were going to their boat and spent about an hour taking pictures of ducks and boats and people. Then a man stopped me and asked me if I was getting some good shots. I turned around to respond and when he saw I was enormously pregnant his eyes lit up and he said I am going to give you the golden ticket to parenting.

He starts out by telling me that his children are in college, but when they were much younger (the youngest around 6 months) a man stopped him and talked his ear off for about 20 minutes and gave him the golden ticket to parenting and he was paying it forward to me. I guess that was my indication that I was about to get my ear talked off for 20 minutes.

Mainly what he told me was that when my babies are just learning to stand and walk that I should get a crap load of ping pong balls and throw them at them as fast as I can – one right after the other. At first I was a little shocked but then he explained to me that it is what he likes to call “push-ups for the eyes”. He said that it will start training them at a very young age to track fast moving objects and it will help them later in life. He told me that his son is an amazing baseball player and his daughter has set 6 swimming records at Gonzaga and he attributes their success to the ping pong balls.

Then he got on his boat in search of a baseball which he gave to me. He said he always keeps a baseball with him to remind him of this. He then told me that once I have realized that this is the number one best thing I could do as a parent to pay it forward.

Yes, he seemed a little cray cray, but I put the baseball in baby girl’s nursery as a reminder to chuck ping pong balls at her in about a year – just not as aggressively as this man told me.