For one, all the action takes place between 11.00pm to 5.00am. Maegan starts her midnight shows about the same time as the 11.00pm game. It is during this period of time that she wants to be awake or at the least, be cuddled to sleep. No amount of pacifier, mozart or patting works. It has to be someone carrying her.
Secondly, the whole world is talking about them. Everywhere you go, people talk about football and World Cup. Every Daphne and I go, people talk about Maegan. If it's about football, it's about Germany winning. If it's about Maegan, it's about us losing.
Thirdly, it's the first thing you wake up to see and the last thing you see before you go to sleep. If you miss last night's match, you wake up and search for the results and with Maegan, you wake up to see if she has grown another centimeter.Both of them are so similar it's scary. And knowing other dad's like me, we both love our daughters and football. We know our priorities but you cannot deny that we are absolutely passionate about both.
This World Cup, we also see lots of favourites being kicked out at various stages, Spain, Holland, Brazil, Germany and England (ok.. we should take England out of the list of favourites winning). Try as they can, they somehow fail at the final attempt.
Similar with me and Maegan. Try as I can in putting Maegan on a routine of sleeping, she just keeps waking up. And she does, she cries and wails. We tried to leave her crying but a parent can withstand only so much. For us, it's 20 - 25 mins.
Like many teams in the world cup, we show lots of promise and talents. But when the crunch time come, we seem to fall short in our attempt. Probably, our match with Maegan is like the England and Portugal quarter-final game.
So much hype about how England will fair and with Portugal never winning the World Cup, the odds are stacked against them. And England tried. And tried. And tried. Right through extra-time, England could not break down Portugal.
And to the penalties it went. England's record of penalty wins are a dismay. So were ours with Maegan. With history set to repeat itself, Carrager misses his penalty and I lost the match carrying a smiling Maegan in my arms at 1.00am in the morning.
There is just so much similarity between the World Cup and me being dad. Like a English football legend once said "Football is twenty two grown men kicking around a silly ball for ninety minutes and at the end of it ... "
Maegan wins.
