Baseball brings us all together

Last night our awesome friends, Andy and Jen, gave us Dragons tickets that they weren't able to use (sidebar: As some of you know or have seen when you visited us, the Dayton Dragons are the single A farm team for the Reds and have a sweet stadium right downtown. They have incredible fan and community support, and you have to get on a waiting list to even have a chance to buy season tickets! The last couple of years, Andy and Jen and Coleman and I have had a share of a season ticket set (4 tickets for 7 games), but even though we love the Dragons, we decided we couldn't really do it again this year because of the timing of Baby Fannin's arrival. So, this was a treat for us to get to use the tickets - thanks, you guys!).

Anywho, apart from the chilly weather, the hour and ten minute rain delay, and all the wet seats, it was a great game against the Clinton Lumberkings. Coleman speculated that Clinton must be near one of the bigger cities in Iowa, and I had to ask, "What big cities in Iowa did you have in mind?" Ah, Midwest humor...

My favorite part of the evening, however, had nothing to do with the game. Coleman was gone from our seats for a little while and a little girl sitting in the row in front of us, about 4 or 5 seats down, turned to ask me where my dad was - actually, her mom had to translate, as she had not yet mastered the finer points of enunciation. Her mom and I both laughed at this question. Either she thought that it's just normal for all girls to go the ballgame with their dads or (horror) she saw me with Coleman and relied on the most immediate male-female relationship she knew and assumed (ew) Coleman was my dad. Whatever.

So I told her that my dad was in Texas. "He's not at home?" Yes, I told her, that's where his home is, but that I'd get to see him this weekend, though. She kept asking me questions and then wondered if she could come sit by me. Adorable, right? So she's sitting by me and her big sister is turned around talking to us, too. Maddie, as it turns out, is 4 and her sister, Haley, is 6. She loves Dora, and shows me her Dora shoes. We start talking about girls and sisters when their mom asks me how long until the baby arrives and I told them that I was having a little girl, too.

They were very interested in this, and so I told them that they might be able to feel where she was. So they've both got their hands on my belly as I'm pointing out how she is positioned and where her head, bottom, and feet are. They were enthralled. And then Maddie, still not quite getting where everything was, put her hand on my right breast and said, "So is her head up here?" It was all I could do not to laugh, but I didn't want to embarrass her, so I just moved her hand back down to my belly and walked her through it again. She wanted to know where everything was - eyes, nose, ears - I think we have a future doctor on our hands (perhaps an ENT), as long as we get over that whole baby in the breast confusion.

They wanted to know if we were going to name her Haley or Maddie, and when I said those were beautiful names, but we were going to name her something different, they wanted to know what we were going to call her. I tried to explain that it was a secret, but you can't tell that to a 4 year-old and a 6 year-old. So yes, there are two children somewhere out there in Dayton who know the name of our unborn daughter. For the rest of you, though, it's still under wraps!

In other news, Baby Fannin LOVES Dragons games. She was having quite the baseball party in my belly last night - major movement over a sustained period of time. As I told her, if she likes sitting through baseball games, she will fit in with my family just fine. Perhaps she was just practicing her batting stance in there, huh Dad? I know, I know - get in there, choke up, keep your eye on the ball, pick one out and give it a ride - I know.