Baby’s first bracket

Okay, so admittedly, at 2 years and 2 1/2 months old, Loyette isn’t actually a “baby” anymore. But the piece of paper pictured below is her first NCAA bracket:

We filled it out over the course of three days, each session starting with great enthusiasm (“Do a racket, Daddy!”), which gradually waned as her attention wandered. Eventually, we’d stop and come back to it later. This evening, just before her bedtime on Tournament’s Eve, we finally finished. As I tweeted earlier, her national champion pick is… Vanderbilt?!? Yeah, I’m not sure where that came from either, except that she seemed to enjoy saying “Van-duh-butt.”

Anyway, these are her genuine picks — and I have the video to prove it! Below are 7 minutes of “highlights” from, uh, “The Making of Loyette’s Bracket,” if you will. (Hey, if SportsCenter can do a lengthy segment on Obama filling out his bracket, why not?)

If it isn’t obvious, Loyette usually repeats whichever team I say last — something I learned when she entered the Bowl Pick ’em Contest — so I always say the underdog first and the favorite second, thus saving her from possibly having a title game of, say, Lehigh vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff. 🙂 But that’s the extent of my deliberate exercise of influence. And she does pick some upsets. To wit, watch for Loyette to skyrocket up the early standings if Houston beats Maryland on Friday… and of course if Vandy makes a surprise Final Four run.

Anyway, if you don’t have the patience to watch the whole video, a few favorite moments are at 0:57-1:27 (Loyette picks Florida State over Gonzaga, much to Daddy’s chagrin), 1:59-2:28 (Loyette gets a “new paper,” from her Dora the Explorer set), 3:45-4:02 (“Pitts-daddy,” “Mommy,” and “Daddy” enter the tournament field), and 4:57-5:05 (…as does “Daddy-tucky”). Also note her enthusiasm for Tennessee and Notre Dame at several points (roughly 0:50, 3:10, 4:05, 4:30 and 5:08)

On a tangentially related note, as long as I’m posting clips from the videos-of-Loyette-in-which-you-can’t-actually-see-Loyette file, here’s one of her drawing with my iPod touch’s Scribble app:

At 27 seconds into the clip, she changes the color herself, and at 48 seconds, she draws an “M for Mommy.”