Spring is Here

mia with magnolia leaves, a photo by tf-oto on Flickr.

With the 80 degree days that Indianapolis has been having the past week, Spring has certainly sprung.  The magnolia trees are now in full bloom, the front yard full of dark pink, near purple leaves, and the backyard and deck colored in soft pink.  I thought it would be cute to take a photo of Mia lounging amongst the petals.  So I dressed her up in pink, swept a big pile together, and ... well, she wasn't too keen on the idea as you can see.  Had she not been crying the whole time, I might have made a bigger fluffier pile with less of the icky brown leaves, but I wasn't about to collect only the pink ones for the shot.  Besides, somehow I like this one better.  Oh well, A for effort, right?

March Mia-dness

Since she'll be spending some afternoons with Daddy watching basketball, Mia obviously wanted a rooting interest.  I need to give her a little help though, so here are her selection tools.  It should be interesting to see how well a 10 week old baby does versus actual college basketball fans ....

My methodology is simple:  In the first round I selected all the #1-4 seeds to advance, just so she had a fighting chance.  Then, all other games are chosen on the "favorite rattle" model.  The rattles are mixed between wrists and ankles so each region has a different configuration.  I'll say "Hey sweetie, you like Georgetown or Belmont?  You like Hoyas or Bruins, baby goo goo" and log her preference accordingly until we got to the Final Four.  Then to select her Final Four winners and National Champion, I alternated the rattles on her ankles, and played best of three, just in case she favored a foot or color (usually her right foot and orange rattle).  For the final game tiebreaker, I averaged the final scores of the three games in last year's Final Four to come up with 113.

So, raise your hand if you have your Final Four as Kentucky, Louisville, Syracuse and Georgetown.

Mia says GO LOUISVILLE CARDINALS! 

Mia and I Catch Some Spring Training Action