Month: June 2010

NBA Draft, 2010

June 29, 2010 / DB

Seven years ago (June 27, 2003 to be exact) I launched the first version of TBB. I kicked things off with an epic, Bill Simmons-style NBA draft breakdown. In fact, if you want to read it for old time’s sake, here it is.

For a few years it was my tradition to either keep a running diary of draft night, or do a breakdown the next day. But as we added more girls to the house and Ron Artest destroyed the Pacers and killed my interest in the NBA, I scaled back my efforts.

This year, the Mrs. was working and I spent most of the evening attempting to get our non-sleeping child to sleep. But I was able to follow along via Twitter. And I’ve read a number of post-draft articles and posts. So while this may not match the early years, I will share some draft thoughts.

I was following three things this year:

Where the three Jayhawks would go.
What the Pacers would do.
If there were any blockbuster trades that would affect the LeBron sweepstakes.

So, in that order…

❖ Xavier Henry and Cole Aldrich kind of summed up what this draft was all about, after the first 3-4 players. Talented guys with holes in their games that will probably have solid, if unspectacular NBA careers. Neither will be an All Star, nor do I expect either of them be a bust.

Cole went first, to New Orleans at 11, and was then traded to Oklahoma City. Perfect. No pressure on him to do anything other than what he’s good at: rebound, swat a shot or two, and set some picks for Kevin Durant. It helps that Sam Presti is (arguably) the best GM in the league; that validates Cole’s value.

Xavier went a pick later to Memphis. Ironic, no? Remember, he had signed to play at the University of Memphis before John Calipari fled for Kentucky.¹ I’m not sure if that’s karma or something else. Rumor has it Xavier looked less than enthused about playing for the Grizzlies. ESPN’s Chad Ford made a fine point on Bill Simmons’ podcast this week: players who don’t attack the basket in high school or college, despite being much bigger than the people that are guarding them, generally don’t become slashers when they get to the NBA. Xavier has a sweet shot. That’s how he’s going to make his money in the NBA. He’s going to be one of those physical studs that can play defense and crash the boards from the perimeter, but if he’s going to last for ten years, it’s going to be because he becomes a deadly outside shooter. He seems like a guy who might do well in a system like Phoenix’s. Memphis….?

And then there was Sherron. I was pulling for him, no doubt, but not surprised when he did not get drafted. I read the reports that he showed up for pre-draft workouts 10-15 pounds heavier than he should have been. I know Bill Self tried to help him, saying he had been battling some injuries, but I’ve heard that was nothing more than cover. Sherron, despite his height, can play in the NBA. But only if he can ever stay in shape. You can’t be fat and slow and expect to run an offense or get your shot off at that level. Hopefully he’ll figure things out, impress in the summer leagues, and stick with Charlotte or another team.

To be honest, I’m just thrilled the guy got his degree. Coming from his upbringing, that’s a far bigger accomplishment than getting picked in the NBA Draft.

❖ After years of playing it safe, Larry Bird got a little nutty this year. Paul George may have the biggest range of where his career could go of any player in the draft. Some have compared him to Tracy McGrady. Others think he has bust written all over him. I don’t know a thing about him, so it’s tough for me to say. Lance Stephenson in the second round was another interesting pick. So much for going the safe route, taking a guy who is certainly talented enough to play in the NBA, but had so many issues in high school that just about every major program in the country backed off of him at some point.²

Interesting picks, for sure, but I’m not sure what to make of them. If George works out, it could be brilliant and the draft that gets the Pacers out of that fighting for the last playoff spot limbo they’ve been in for three years. If he busts, that’s the end for Larry, for sure, and if there’s an investor in Kansas City or Seattle that can pay the bills, perhaps the end for the Pacers in Indy.

One thing is for sure, the pressure is on Brandon Rush. Two more perimeter players join the team and it’s time for B-Rush to decide if he wants to be a rotation player or ride the bench in the NBA.

Whatever, they still need a point guard.

❖ The only big trade was when the Bulls sent Kirk Hinrich³ to Washington, which got them the cap space to sign two max free agents. So there is a chance that when the season begins in the fall, we could see the Bulls trot out a lineup that features Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Joakim Noah, and Chris Bosh. Sick. A lot of people my age will be digging through their attics to see if any of their Bulls gear from the 90s still fits.

I suppose I’ll write more about LeBron once he makes a decision and signs somewhere, but I’m already sick of all the hype. Yeah, it’s a decision that will affect the course of the league for (perhaps) the next decade. But the wall-to-wall coverage of rumors and guesses when negotiations haven’t even begun is annoying.

So that’s it, I guess. It does kick off what should be a fascinating 18-24 months for the NBA. The LeBron sweepstakes, all the other free agent pieces, and the likely lockout a year from now as the owners and players attempt to cleanup the financial mess they’ve made for themselves. I’m hoping they just announce the lockout early so Josh Selby spends two years in Lawrence.

Rumor has it Calipari was insufferable on draft night. I find that very difficult to believe. I’ve been kicking around a post comparing Calipari to Pete Carroll. Keep that in the back of your mind in case it actually happens. ↩
I wonder how different KU’s season would have been with Stephenson rather than Xavier Henry. Xavier may have fit in to a fault. Might Lance’s bigger personality freed the team from Sherron’s a little, or would he have weakened them by adding another alpha dog? More importantly, would he have shit the bed against Northern Iowa or not? I’m going to my happy place now… ↩
How about that, Hinrich was one of the important players in my first draft breakdown and here he is, seven years later, still playing a role! I did assert he was the best pick of the draft that night. ↩

WC10 – The Cream Rises

June 28, 2010 / DB

A disappointing weekend for Team USA. Another early defensive breakdown put the team behind early. They rallied after halftime and controlled the second half, but could only manage a Landon Donovan penalty to tie. Then, in overtime, another quick breakdown and Ghana was able to weather the storm and prevail 2–1 in 120+ minutes.

There were quick charges that coach Bob Bradley should not return, as the early defensive errors are easiest to explain by blaming the coach. It’s good to see the American sports press has learned something from the world soccer press, who greet every loss with immediate questions about the coach’s future.

I tend to like Bradley, and think he deserves a chance to take this team, which is loaded with young talent, through at least the next two years before World Cup qualifying begins again. But if someone better is out there, perhaps it is time to give him a chance and have two years to implement his system and get to know the pool of players he’ll begin qualifying for Brazil ‘14 with.

That bit of unpleasantness aside, this was a fun US team to watch. They were very strong in the middle of the field, which balanced their weakness in the back and failure to produce in the front. But even at their weak points, this was finally a US team that was both talented and experienced enough to compete with anyone in the world. The tide is turning in US soccer, and I think going forward, we should always expect to get out of the group stage and be a threat to go deep into the knockout phase. We’re finally seeing the classic great American athlete make an impact on the national team. There aren’t many teams as fast and physical as the US. We just need some more technical skill and we’ll be a team that is a threat to win each time they take the field.

Props to Ghana, a fun team to watch, for giving Africa someone to cheer for in this World Cup.

Sunday’s games were fantastic. The Germany-England game had everything. The Germans dominated early, and you could sense hearts breaking all over England when the Germans went up 2–0. But the English quickly got a goal back, and moments later Frank Lampard appeared to score on a gorgeous volley from outside the box. Only the referee and sideline official missed it and were faked out by the German goalie who played the rebound of the crossbar as if it had never crossed the goal line. No matter, England controlled the next 10 minutes of the game, pressing forward and putting the German defense on its toes. It seemed like a matter of time before they equalized.

Then came halftime, the Germans regrouped, and got back to their ass-kicking ways in the second half, going on to win 4–1. It was a terrific game of attacking soccer by both teams, a welcome event in a tournament that has seen too many teams satisfied with laying back and hoping for a 1–0 win. Germany announced that they are a contender this year, despite their youth. And England showed, once again, that despite having a wonderful collection of talent, they still struggle to turn that talent into a national side that can win at the World Cup or European championships.

I bet I was not the only viewer who both found some irony in the German roster and was a bit taken aback by it. Germany features two players that were born in Poland. A player of African descent. A son of Turkish immigrants. A dark-skinned Brazilian. And another player named Mario Gomez. The Germans! The country that started the most destructive war in world history with racial superiority as one of its motivating causes. Kind of weird. There is perhaps no greater sign of how small a world we live in as a German national soccer team that comes no where near being 100% Aryan. Good on the Germans! I hope Hitler is rolling over in his grave.

The second game featured Argentina, a pre-tournament favorite, and Mexico, my dark horse to go deep. I watched most of the first half from the gym, so I missed some of the details, but again we were treated to terrific, attacking soccer by both teams. And, again, the officiating played a major role in the game. While the missed England goal was defensible – it came on a long shot with both officials away from the goal – some of the errors in the ARG-MEX game were awful, most notably Argentina’s first goal. Carlos Tevez was clearly offside, behind every Mexican defender and the goalie, yet his goal stood.

Whatever chance the Mexicans had to hang with Argentina went up in flames when they spent five minutes chasing and screaming at the officials. They might have the talent to play with Argentina, but it takes a perfect mental game to knock off a favorite. Argentina added a second soon after the first, and cruised to a 3–1 win. The Germany-Argentina quarterfinal game should be something else.

Sunday’s games could bode well for what we’ll see the next two days. Perhaps we’ll finally see the Netherlands break a game open. The other three games – Brazil-Chile, Paraguay-Japan, and Spain-Portugal – all have the potential to be wide-open affairs. Hopefully those teams and their coaches will be willing to open things up and go for the win, rather than play typical safe Word Cup soccer.

❖

Saving The Day

June 24, 2010 / DB

OK, it wasn’t quite the Miracle on Ice, Part II, but Landon Donovan’s game-winning goal Wednesday was pretty freaking cool.

We, unfortunately, had a previously scheduled engagement with the new cheetah exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo. So, other than watching the brilliant opening ceremonies, when the US crowd nearly drowned out the PA system signing the national anthem, I was forced to follow the game on my iPhone from the zoo.

M’s taken a mild interest in the World Cup after her soccer experience this spring. She watched part of the US-England game with me. She loves the goalies from various teams that wear all purple. But it’s been tough to keep her interested and try to explain what’s going on.¹

Before the game I explained that the US needed to win to keep playing, so this was the most important game. She seemed to grasp the concept, but each time I gave her a score update, she was more interested in what animals we were going to see next. I think you could say that for just about any five-year-old.

We were finishing up, making one last pass by the brown bear exhibit, when I checked the score and saw it was still 0-0 in the 89th minute. England was ahead in their game. It looked like the US was about to crash out of another World Cup and begin a week of screaming by the talking heads back home about how they are tired of having the World Cup shoved down their throats every four years.²

We started walking towards the exit and I pulled my phone out again. It takes a moment for the ESPN Scorecenter app to refresh. It was frozen at the 89th minute, waiting for new data to flow through. Then I saw the magical change in the scoreline: U.S. 1, Donovan 90+, Algeria 0.

“M,” I said, “They scored and the game’s almost over!”

She seemed unimpressed. In her defense, she was tired and hot and sweaty. It was not the coolest of June mornings.

As you know, the score held and the US advanced, winning their group. Now in the Sweet 16 of the World Cup, they face a dangerous but inconsistent Ghana side that eliminated them four years ago in Germany. Win that and a date against the winner of Uruguay and South Korea for a trip to the semifinals. None of those games are gimmes, but they’re certainly a notch below having to play Germany, Argentina, or Spain.

This team makes nothing easy, but they also thrive in the pressure of needing to do something to get the result. After decades of hearing how soccer was the next big sport in the US, the 2010 team has a chance to finally make the impact that could turn at least international-level soccer into an important and popular spectator sport in the States. There’s still a lot of soccer to be played, but the US has produced, arguably, two of the three best goals of the tournament.³ They’ve been involved in two other glaring officiating decisions that could have become the story of the tournament. If nothing else, the US is now a story at the World Cup for what happens on the field, rather than the hype and expectations that surround them.

One thing at a time, though. Let’s kick some Ghananian ass on Saturday.

Haters will probably say it’s tough for anyone to remain interested in a bunch of 0-0 and 1-0 games. I don’t try to convert, I just try to love. You’re missing out. ↩
If you don’t like it, don’t watch. It is possible, in the age of the internet and 500 channel cable systems, to avoid programming you don’t like. Trust me, I avoided the NBA all winter without too much effort. ↩
Donovan’s goal against Slovenia was incredible, too. ↩

Run, Forest, Run

June 24, 2010 / DB

I forgot to mention that I ran my first 5K in over three years last Saturday. I had been “training”, and by training I mean running approximately once every 5-10 days, and was finally finding some fun in running again. It helped that L., unlike both of her sisters, loves to go for runs in the jogging stroller. In fact, if I time it right, she’ll often fall asleep along the way.

Anyway, I’m proud to to report that I finished fourth in my age group, and 26th overall!

Of course I must also admit that only 100 or so people ran the race, and I was over eight minutes slower than the guy who won our age group.

Oh well. Baby steps.

I bought some new shoes today, so if the temperature ever drops below 85 again, I might try to run twice every 5-10 days.

❖

Understanding Me, The Fan Boy

June 21, 2010 / DB

A very good read on how companies and their marketing departments produce loyal customers. I contend there’s more to it than just the branding push by companies, but it does help to explain why dorks like me are slaves to Apple (Or Nikon or Volkswagen or Nike or…) I’m glad my wife didn’t read anything along these lines before she let me buy my first Mac almost six years ago.

Fanboyism isn’t anything new, it’s just a component of branding, which is something marketers and advertisers have known about since Quaker Oats created a friendly logo to go on their burlap sacks.
There was, of course, no friendly Quaker family making the oats back in 1877. The company wanted people to associate the trustworthiness and honesty of Quakers with their product. It worked.

Fanboyism and Brand Loyalty

Not Sure What To Think

June 21, 2010 / DB

Last Friday M. attended a birthday party¹ at one of the many local bounce places.² After bouncing for awhile, then eating pizza, cake, and ice cream, the host mom handed out tokens for the arcade area to all the kids. While I was helping M. earn some tickets so she could get another cheap, plastic toy to take home, I noticed a Pop-a-Shot. Except this Pop-a-Shot didn’t look like the games I remembered. All the graphics were black, silver, and purple and the text graffiti-styled. The net was a chain rather than a traditional net. The balls were black. Then I noticed the name.

Rapper Ballin’

What?

I wasn’t sure whether the be amused, bemused, or offended. Rapper Ballin’? Are you serious? In lily white Carmel, Indiana, no less.

None of the kids played the game. I don’t know of a bunch of 5-7 year olds sensed the irony of the game in an up-scale shopping area, were turned off by its urban overtones, or were just too little to play.

I have no qualms with game companies tweaking their goods to fit certain demographics. But Rapper Ballin’ just felt a little desperate and sad to me.

Wednesday M. will go to her fourth birthday party of the summer. Two of those were for twins. Apparently her class was loaded with summer birthdays. We’ve come home with a lot of goodie bags and asked for a lot of gift receipts at Target this month. ↩
We’ve now been to Bounce-U, Bounce Town, Bouncertown, and Monkey Joe’s. Plus the girls’ gymnastics place has added an inflatable bounce house that the classes get to run through at the end of class. I wish I had invested in inflatable bounce toys five years ago. ↩

Conference Craziness

June 16, 2010 / DB

It appears that the dust has settled, for the time being, in the great college conference realignment of 2010, so I can finally try to put some thoughts together. I’m not promising anything particularly well organized or original. Consider yourself warned.

What a strange couple of weeks it has been. There were multiple times during that span in which I stopped reading any e-mails, message board posts, Tweets, etc. that had anything to do with what was going to happen to the Big 12. Some of the scenarios were difficult enough to consider, and when you throw in hysterics from some people, it was easier just to avoid it for awhile.

I was concerned about what would happen to KU, for sure. But I was also confident that they would land in another big conference. My position all along has been that this is going to be a multi-year process, and whatever gets resolved this summer will just be the first step and will be followed by more changes down the road. Because of that, it was perhaps easier for me than some to believe that KU would end up in a conference comparable to the Big 12 rather than the Mountain West or something like that.

There are still many details that need to be revealed, but for the most part I’m happy with the Big 12 surviving as a ten-school conference. However, had you told me months ago that the conference would lose two schools this summer, I don’t think I would have put Nebraska on the list. That was a pretty amazing and shocking move. We were out at dinner when that news broke, and as I saw it flash on the ESPN crawl at our restaurant, I think that may have been the lowest moment in the who process for me. If Nebraska was leaving, the conference was toast, I thought. I bear no grudge towards any school that makes a move that it believes is best for its students, athletes, faculty, fans, donors, and alums. But it is disappointing that a school that KU has been playing since 1907 and featured one of the defining athletic programs of the old Bog 8 would cut-and-run.

Now is the Big 10(12) going to wuss out and go to an east-west split that gives Nebraska a huge advantage in football, or will they find another way to mix the schools up so that Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State aren’t stuck in one division?

I could give a shit about Colorado. They haven’t been a player in the conference in years and are under immense financial stress, from what I’ve read. Enjoy the Pac-10, Buffs. I hear trips to Pullman, WA are awesome in the winter.

I should not mock. KU could have ended up going west had things worked out differently.

So now the Big 12 is down to ten schools. I think my view of the current set-up will be similar to that of fans of most of the rest of the conference: I’m not thrilled being hooked to Texas and having my school make concessions to keep them happy. But the reality is it takes a cash cow like Texas (or Ohio State, Florida, etc.) to keep a conference afloat. I don’t trust the administration at Texas at all. I’m afraid we’ll be going through this again when the next TV contract runs out. If giving Texas some more freedom generates more revenue for the rest of the conference, allows a major conference to have a northern hub in Kansas City, and keeps KU in a BCS conference, I suppose I’m for it.

It’s difficult to weigh in on the possibilities had the Big 12 totally imploded, since most were based on rumor and speculation rather than any concrete news from the schools involved. Had KU needed to find a new conference, though, my first choice would have been one that did not include Texas as a member. Ideally the Big 10 would have come to KU and Missouri and asked them to join. That would have been the most geographically convenient option, plus I’d suddenly see every KU football and basketball game on the Big 10 network, not to mention annoy the hell out of my Big 10 alum friends.

I think my second choice would have been the Pac-10, assuming Texas did not go west, too. The Big East seems like the next conference that is going to have membership issues, and I’d hate to move there and see it break apart immediately. It would be interesting, though, if the Big East was secure and KU did have to pick between it and the Pac-10 what the school would choose.

Thankfully, for now, we don’t have to worry about that.

I think it’s also interesting that the conference seems content to eschew the football championship game. That’s such a money maker that even with a fat new TV contract in the future, I’m surprised they’re so willing to set the game aside. I know coaches don’t like it, but that’s a big chip the ADs and presidents are giving up. Then again, perhaps that’s just talk in favor of the new reality, and they are in fact looking at schools they can poach to get the league back to 12 teams sooner rather than later.¹

As for the two money making sports, the Big 12(10) is going to be a beast for football, especially for the teams in the second division. With the elimination of divisions, it’s going to be awfully tough for some schools to get six wins. That’s why it would not surprise me if the schedule gets adjusted and they go to a Big 10(12) style of playing a core of rival schools and rotating through the rest. Giving each school four non-conference games increases the odds of maximizing the number of bowl bids the league receives.

In basketball, you can argue it’s the toughest conference, top-to-bottom, in the nation. Colorado and Nebraska brought nothing to that side of the ledger. There are no pushovers left. And with the return to the round-robin schedule, I doubt you’ll see too many teams getting through the season with only one loss. Big 12(10) teams will either enter the NCAA tournament as tested as anyone in the country, or completely wiped out from beating the hell out of each other for two months.

Hopefully things will calm down for awhile and we can all get back to worrying about games and recruiting and coaching changes rather than where and who we’ll be playing in two years.

Speaking of which, why this dumb rule that you need 12 teams to play a conference title game? How does that make any sense? And how can the NCAA mandate that kind of thing when they don’t control how a national champion is selected? Maybe that’s the other answer: that rule will go away to prevent conferences from raiding each other to get to the magic number. ↩

Del Boca Vista

June 15, 2010 / DB

Notice some changes around here? If you haven’t, you’re not paying very close attention. Why the changes? Read on, friends.

Welcome to Phase 3 (or is it Phase 2?) of Del Boca Vista, errr. the development of TBB.¹ To quickly refresh, over a year ago I took full control of the blog, moving it off of a hosted service to a domain and server space that I owned. I also dumped the easy blogging platforms² for WordPress, which offers me more control over the granular details of the blog.

The plan for Phase 3 (or 2) was to learn some HTML so I could build my own theme for the blog, from top-to-bottom. I purchased an HTML/CSS³ book in February of 2009. I quickly got through 3-4 chapters. Then I didn’t open it for months. Fortunately, I found an fantastic theme that I installed and have been using ever since.

About a month ago, I restarted Phase 3(2). I began working through the HTML book. I started digging into the code of the theme I had installed, as well as others, to try to figure out how WordPress works. I kept with the book this time, and finished it off last week. I wouldn’t call myself an HTML master, but I now know more than most people; just enough to cause problems if I’m not careful.

Turns out WordPress is a little harder to figure out than just learning HTML and CSS. There’s a whole other coding language that is involved, PHP. There are ways around learning exactly how PHP works, if you carefully follow various tutorials. But I find it difficult to dig through code if I have no idea what it means.

I have a book about PHP basics on my desk that I’m going to work through, but I don’t know how much it is going to tell me about the guts of WordPress.

So, for the time being, I’ve installed another theme. I loved the previous theme, but found it difficult to hack and tweak, at least with my current code skill level. I like the look of the new one, and if nothing else, it’s a nice change after over a year. I’ve already made some minor changes and hope to keep digging and find some more adjustments I can make to put my stamp on it even more. Don’t be surprised to find new things or slight adjustments each time you visit.

The long-term goal is still to build my own theme at some point, but it’s a more involved and lengthy process that I expected.

Has it been too long, or do most of my readers still get the Del Boca Vista reference? ↩
I’ve been through Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress.org. ↩
HTML and CSS are the main pillars of current website design. HTML builds the structure, CSS adds the presentation and style details. But you knew that already. ↩

Las Chicas

June 14, 2010 / DB

Time for a girl update.

A big event has not gotten its proper blog treatment: M.’s “graduation” from kindergarten. I use the quotation marks because A) kindergarten graduations are kind of silly to begin with and B) she’s not really done with kindergarten.

Let’s get the event out of the way first. Her class put on a fine performance for family and friends. They sang songs, showed off artwork, recited their lines to a couple poems, and received diplomas. The teacher was very emotional, as were some of the parents. It was a fun way to end the year, especially for the students.

As we were collecting assorted items from the classroom before our final exit, I whispered to another parent that it was kind of silly to have graduation, since M. was going through kindergarten again next year. She quickly agreed and said, “I think just about every one of the kids is repeating next year.” A lot of summer birthdays in the class, I guess.

Now what’s this about M. repeating? In Indiana the cut off date for beginning school is August 1. With a birthday in the final week of July, she barely makes it. Our plan entering this year was for her to repeat kindergarten next year when she transitions to the school where we expect her to spend the next nine years. But, we were open to moving her to first grade next fall if her current teacher thought M. would be bored repeating.

M. did a great job this year; she’s reading beyond grade level, doing simple math, and matured in many ways. She certainly benefited from her class. There are still several skills, though, where she’s right at age appropriateness, or even lagging a bit. In other words, she’s pretty much normal for an almost six-year-old: some things she is advanced at, some things she’s shockingly normal, others she needs some work. Her teacher said girls often do better than boys with repeating kindergarten and thought, because of M.’s age, that was the way to go. Also, the school she will move to next year has a different curriculum for their kindergarteners. They have Spanish, art, and music classes on different days. They are also more independent in what and how they teach, rather than adhering closely to what the local public schools teach. While the grade name will be the same, it will be a completely different setting and class, so won’t feel like a repeat of this past year.

At least we hope.

In a perfect world, the church where M. has spent the last three years would have an elementary and middle school. But they don’t, so we’re going to have to commute 20 minutes, give-or-take, twice a day rather than the 2-3 minutes it takes us to get to our neighborhood church.

C. finished her 3’s class as well. She came a long, long way since September. Back in the fall, when they went through assessments, she refused to do some activities. She often hung back and did her own thing when the rest of the class was engaged in group activities. By the spring, she was doing everything asked of her during assessments, enjoyed story times, and had developed some close friendships with a couple classmates. In fact, several of the boys seem interested in her, which is scary.

For all of her academic progress, I think the best way to describe C. right now is weird. She’s hit that strange age where all kinds of bizarre behavior comes out of kids as the leave toddlerhood behind and enter school age. It drives us crazy, but we try to remind ourselves that every kid goes through this stage.

One of her strange behaviors is acting like an animal. She goes through periods where she communicates through grunts and groans and other animal sounds rather than words. She has an odd growling sound that she makes both when she’s upset or excited about something. I’ve started calling her my baby bear, since that’s what she sounds like. When she speaks, her language and vocabulary are very good, so there are no concerns about her development in this area.

All three girls went through Daddy phases, but we can, with confidence, chalk up L. as a huge daddy’s girl. When we nap together, she snuggles as close as she can get, wraps my arms around her, then her arms around mine and refuses to let me go. When upset, if S. is comforting her, she’ll call my name and run to me instead. While I enjoy having one girl be mine, it does get annoying. And I believe S. is enjoying every second of it, since the other two girls are all over her constantly.

L. has some fun phrases now. Tell her not to spill something and she will say “I won’t.” Tell her not to play with something that doesn’t belong to her, she’ll respond “I’m not.” Anytime she sees soccer, whether on TV or in a book, she yells, “Go M.!” She enjoys talking about houses. “Daddy’s house! Mimi’s house! M.’s house!” For some reason, she can’t say C., which you would think was easy. Nor can she say L., which makes more sense. She’ll proudly say M.’s name, stay silent when you ask her C.’s name, and when you point at her, she yells “ME!”

❖