Baby Teeth and Baseball

This may get sappy and personal, but I don't care. This has been an unforgettable "dad" week for me. My oldest daughter Abby is just about to turn 5 and we experienced two "firsts" that I know I'll never forget. Monday night she comes to me and says "Daddy, my tooth is really loose." I'm thinking - No way. She's exaggerating. She's just too young to start losing baby teeth! So she's brushing her teeth and the thing starts bleeding and I see it's hanging on by a thread. Out comes the video camera and I'm reaching into my little girl's mouth pulling out her first tooth. I remember when I did that as a kid. I was the biggest crybaby you've ever seen. Abby didn't even flinch. The only tears she cried were tears of joy when she saw the tooth and realized that she was becoming a "big girl" and the tooth fairy was headed to our house. I was shown up by a little girl. MY little girl!! Maybe she's not so little anymore. Then, on Wednesday night the two of us made our first trip together to Turner Field. Over the past few weeks, I have introduced Abby to the wonderful world of baseball and to my surprise, she loves it! So we're sitting out in right field in the upper deck with our free Mark Teixeira bobbleheads and my little girl is nearly without words. All she can do is stare and take in everything she's seeing. Finally, she says, "I've never seen grass that green before." Beautiful observation, sweetie. About the only rule she has a grasp on is - every time the Braves get 3 outs, they get to hit. Chipper was already her favorite player but now he has reached god-like status after belting a home run right in front of her eyes and realizing that all he has to do is step up to the plate and the whole stadium erupts. "Everybody loves Chipper, don't they Daddy?" I didn't tell her this, but the best part of the game for me was actually the worst part for her. It was getting late so about the 7th inning I told her that we had to go home. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Daddy, I don't want to go home." Music to my ears. My little girl loves baseball just like her Daddy. I promised to bring her back sometime and for the past two days she has proven to me that she intends to hold me to my end of the bargain. Last night she wanted to stay up past her bedtime not to have a snack or get a drink of water...she wanted to watch Chipper hit one more time on TV. I let her.