December 24, 11:00pm. In baseball, when a minor leaguer makes it to the major leagues, they call it getting called up to the show. The moment they’ve trained and worked their whole lives for, coming to fruition.

Today I get called up to the show – except I haven’t been training and preparing my whole life for this, in fact I’m probably woefully unprepared. Today, my wife works a 24 hour call, the first one since Madison was born. Me and Maddie, alone, for 24 hours. Even the wife never did 24 hours alone, and she knows what she’s doing way more than I do.

Today I step up to the plate to face a 100mph fastball, and pretend I’m ready for it.

My wife fed Maddie at 6am before she went to work, that’s the passing of the baton. We go from here.

. . .

Maddie slept til 10, which means so did I. Pretty strong start for both of us. In the hour since, two poops and she took a 4oz bottle without too much of a fight. Not a bad start at all.

. . .

It’s 2:00 and things have gone extremely well. Lots of daddy daughter bonding. An extremely easy bottle. Watched a movie, not a bad Sunday. That said, no poop since 10:45…the storm is a comin.

. . .

It’s 9:30 and Maddie is asleep. Over the course of the day, she took 5 bottles with no problem. In fact, until the end of the day when she got tired, I believe we went almost all day without any crying. We played, we napped, we watched a movie and we watched football. Today I spent the whole day hanging out with my daughter – I’ve never said that before.

The minor hiccup came when it was time for bed – Madison disagreed with this decision. To help her on her way, I took her out of bed, turned on the music, and walked around with her for a bit. On some level, it’s almost like I was dancing with her. In that moment, I couldn’t help but think about the times in the future that I might dance with her – the various events, what songs would we dance to? Then I think back; it’s hard to believe that tomorrow she’s already 11 weeks old. She’s already so much bigger than the tiny 5 pound 11 ounce little baby that we brought home. It’s amazing the changes we’ve already seen, and how quick it all happens.

Today was all but unremarkable…except for the very essence of what today was. To quote a prominent poet from the 90’s – today was a good day.