I knew the day – or night, as it were – was coming, but I wasn’t expecting it to be Monday night.

Yes, it’s official: At bedtime, Madison Wilde is now Dean Smith.

On Monday nights and Thursday nights, Paula coaches gymnastics at the YMCA, leaving Mr. Mom to handle both Madison and Sydney from 6ish until just after 9 o’clock. The Wilde house rules – as set forth by The Boss (read: not me) – require all little people to be tucked in no later than 7:30 p.m., meaning all pre-bedtime snacking, Dora the Explorer viewing, potty-training, bath-taking, toothbrushing and book reading must be done by then. Because I know it’s my responsibility to get those things done – and that there’ll be hell to pay from Paula if I don’t – I’ve been vigilant about enforcing the rules.

Until Monday night.

I’ve always felt that Madison, who turned 2 about a week and a half ago, was smart, but the way she played me like a Stradivarius was impressive. Upstairs in her bedroom at 7:15 for books, she knows I am a sucker for reading. When I put her to bed, we usually read four books. The first of our now-weekly trips to the De Pere library yielded two Olivia books, the original Curious George book and something called “Princess Says Goodnight,” or as Maddie calls it, “Princess in her Jammies.”

Upon completion of the four books – at 7:32, close enough – I went to lay Maddie in her crib and it triggered a meltdown of epic proportions – one I’d never seen at bedtime before. And it only got worse from there.

While there wasn’t the endless variation of bedtime delays – no requests for a glass of water, or extra blankets, or pillow adjustments, etc. – nothing I tried to calm her down and get her into sleep mode seemed to work. Her purple Twilight Turtle and its projected stars on the ceiling proved to be more of a distraction than a calming influence. (I should’ve known that one.) My “OK, one more book” mantra eventually led to 10 books being read.

Finally, at 9 o’clock, with Paula set to pull into the driveway in less than 15 minutes, I gave up. Knowing her climbing skills, I knew if I put her in her crib while in meltdown mode, she’d be Alcatraz-ing her way over the side and likely landing with a thud, despite getting her mother’s athleticism. So, I caved, dialed up an episode of Nick Jr.’s Olivia on Time Warner Kids On Demand, plopped her in our bed next to me and let her watch the show while awaiting Paula’s arrival, a beaten man on the wrong end of a bedtime Four Corners.

When Paula came home, I got the sense she was more impressed with Madi-Dean’s persistence and execution than she was disappointed in me. But when bedtime arrived on Tuesday night, well, Paula was John Wooden in UCLA’s heyday. Madison was fast asleep by 7:42 p.m.

Which makes me … Steve Yoder?

GREEN BAY – I blame myself more than anyone else. But I don’t think it’s entirely my fault.

With Disney’s Beauty & the Beast back in theaters in 3D, I decided it would be a good opportunity to take Madison to her first in-theater movie. We’ve been wearing out Belle and Lumiere and Mrs. Potts and Chip on our old VHS tape in recent weeks, and I figured a Sunday matinee would be not very expensive and not very crowded. Maddie

(I was right about the second part; as for inexpensive, while Maddie was free since she’s under 3, when did a matinee show start costing $10.50 for adults?)

So we headed over to our local Cineplex Sunday afternoon, which was our first mistake. With a 4:10 listed start time, we arrived at 3:40, stood in line for tickets for a bit – apparently Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was the pick for most other moviegoers – along with Packers PR man Jonathan Butnick and injured offensive tackle Derek Sherrod with his mother. Then, we picked up our snack (pretzel bites, for $6.75), picked out our seats (at that point, we were the only two people in the theater, which should’ve been a hint) and then headed back out to the lobby area to burn off some energy before the movie began.

Maddie could not have been more excited about the whole thing.

Now, had I been a veteran parent, I would have thought this through better. Maddie actually has a pretty long attention span for someone who just turned 2 earlier this month, but it’s still limited. Had I been smarter, I would’ve arrived later, putzed around the lobby during the seemingly endless advertisements and coming attractions and then started the attention-span clock when the actual movie started.

Instead, we were in our seats at 4:10, watched 20 minutes of previews, then sat through the Tangled featurette – all with Maddie patiently and intently watching. While she wouldn’t don the nifty 3D glasses, she was perfectly content for those 25 minutes or so.

Then, the movie started.

While I understand there are bills to pay and unhealthy snacks to hawk, can’t Disney and the concession-stand folks take one for the team and just start the movie immediately?

Maddie actually did OK for the first 20 minutes of Beauty & The Beast. Then, she decided it was a good time to start going up and down the steps. She wanted to watch the movie from the back row. Then she wanted to go back for her pretzels. Then she wanted to watch more from the back row.

When did I know we were in trouble? When she removed her shoes and announced, loudly, “Put on Pocahontas, please.”

Things spiraled from there. A few more trips up and down the steps led to a trip out to the lobby. When we returned, my decree that she had to put her shoes back on did not go over well. Neither did trying to carry her, as my fiercely independent first born went into a full-on meltdown. We left our belongings at our seat to the screams of “No, Dad!” No, Dad!” and while she calmed down once outside, our return trip to collect our things led to more uncharacteristic screaming.

As we exited, I could hear Jerry Orbach crooning, “Be our guest, be our guest, put our service to the test …”

We’ll try again when Finding Nemo 3D reaches theaters. And I know it’s coming because I saw it … in the 20 minutes of previews.

Madison has reached that wonderful age where she parrots everything we say. A month shy of her second birthday, she has been a great source of entertainment as she has been a vocabulary sponge, starting with words like recyclables, quesadilla and octagon and working her way up to complex sentences with better structure than many of the ones her dad writes about the Packers.

She has also been a fabulous motivator for cutting back my profanity while behind the wheel of the family truckster, which is really the only place where I am prone to expletives.

But where she has been at her best has been with the catchphrases that Paula and I unwittingly use all the time. The two most frequent in my lexicon are Be careful! and What’s next?

Paula, meanwhile, is full of them. Our friends Angie and Will, for example, can thank Paula for their son’s first words, which were Oh jeez! – a phrase he heard so frequently from Paula that it beat out the traditional “Mama” and “Dada.”

The quote du jour from Maddie, meanwhile, is Something else. It took us awhile to figure out where it came from, only to realize it when she started trekking to the open pantry doors several times a day while repeating her new favorite phrase.

You see, Paula is fanatical about developing healthy eating habits for the girls, in part because she knows that my diet doesn’t exactly set a good example. Given free dietary reign as a kid, I seldom made healthy choices, and those bad decisions plague me to this day. The limited culinary options often available to sportswriters in press boxes, airports and late at night don’t help, either, although my New Year’s resolution is to break the cycle.

(For the record, I typed that last paragraph while, no lie, eating mini Chips Ahoy cookies at 12:32 a.m.)

In addition, Madison is more of a grazer than a big-meal eater – something I’m told is also not a bad thing, with the “six small meals” concept espoused by many a nutritionist – so during the course of a day, she could eat any of the following: Yogurt, organic chicken nuggets, baby food from a pouch, whole wheat snack sticks, Gerber puffs or yogurt melts, fresh fruit (apples, bananas top the list), whole grain macaroni and cheese, a granola bar … the list is endless.

Her beverage options are plentiful, too, from her soy milk (I’m the only lactose-tolerant person in my house) to her diluted fruit juices to flavored water to what she refers to as her “mocha,” a cup of milk with a tiny splash of either Hershey’s chocolate syrup or a flavored coffee creamer, which she insists on drinking from an adult coffee to-go cup.

As a result, we have created something of a monster when it comes to making choices. It doesn’t matter what snack or beverage she is enjoying at the time, all she wants is “something else.” Nothing specific, of course. Just “something else.”

That, of course, can be challenging during a two-hour car ride to or from Milwaukee, when your something elses are in short supply. And as you’ll see, it extends beyond food and to activities as well. Coloring book? Something else. Magna Doodle? Something else. Aqua Doodle? Something else. Sesame Street game on your iPod Touch? Something else.

She is, well, something else.

I recently had reason to use one of my many favorite John Wooden quotes in a story about Packers rookie return man Randall Cobb.

Be quick, but don't hurry, the legendary UCLA basketball coach famously said.

Sydney apparently isn’t as into The Wizard of Westwood’s wisdom as her dad.

Two nights ago, after eight months of relative inactivity – well, inactive compared to her wild and crazy sister – Sydney not only crawled for the first time, she also stood up unaided and took her first step.

I figure she’ll be running the 40-yard dash by week’s end.

As I have said before, I am fascinated by the way children develop various skills at different rates. Madison was an early walker (8 1/2 months) but she started walking with help at 6 months. Sydney, until a couple weeks ago, had no interest in crawling, but any chance she got she would try to pull herself up by using the nearest person – Mom, Dad, Madison, a neighbor girl – for leverage.

Still, I expected it to be awhile before she made any attempt at walking or was able to keep her balance long enough to stand unaided, given that virtually every kid crawls before he/she can walk. (You have to crawl before you can walk wouldn’t be a cliché otherwise, right?) And then, suddenly, Syd decided she wanted to try to reach all those developmental accomplishments in one evening.

She also discovered that her tongue exists, but that’s another post (and another video) for another day. Unlike Sydney, I want to pace myself.

I don’t consider myself to be particularly interesting. I am fascinated by other people’s life stories and love the challenge of telling them, but if someone decided he or she wanted to write something about me, I have a feeling it would make for a very short book.

And yet, Sydney apparently has decided that I, and not the Dos Equis guy, am The Most Interesting Man In The World.

This is a fairly recent development. I’ve been able to make her giggle for quite a while, and as she’s becoming more mobile – not yet able to full-fledged crawl, she does manage to operate pretty well in roughly a five square foot space – she’s gotten to be more and more fun to play with. Her favorite game, at this point, is to have me roll balls along the floor of the living room to her from the other side of the room and try to catch them. We call it Sydney Bocce at our house.

Now, however, whatever I’m doing is fascinating is to her, at least judging from her facial expressions and the way she leans to get a better view.

Typing on my laptop? Whatcha writing, Dad?

Opening the refrigerator door? You getting milk, Dad?

Cleaning off the kitchen counter? You’re not throwing away the Target ad, are ya, Dad?

My possessions are now infinitely more interesting, too. Upon our return from San Diego, Sydney realized she’d been put down in close proximity to my computer backpack. Suddenly, she was helping herself to a phone charger, a digital recorder and my press pass (the one that, as Twitter followers know, I’d left at the hotel before the game).

I understand that someday, Sydney will be a high-schooler (or perhaps it’ll happen even sooner) and decide that I’m not only not particularly interesting, I’m not even worth listening to. But for now, I’ll gladly accept the title of The Most Interesting Man In The World, even if only one little soon-to-be 8-month-old thinks so.

As road trips go, my trip to San Diego wasn’t a banner journey.

My lily-white Wisconsin skin absorbed a pretty good sunburn when I foolishly thought driving the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down on the rental car without wearing sunscreen was a good idea. I left my game day credential in my hotel room, and if not for my wife Paula and Packers PR life-saver Sarah Quick, I’d have been trapped outside Qualcomm Stadium for hours. And for a place where it supposedly never rains (or so sang Albert Hammond), it came down pretty good all day Sunday.

But none of that really bothers me. I’ve never been one to complain about this job. I can deal with travel snafus, uninteresting games, bad press box food, just about anything. I know how blessed I am to have a gig like this. So I can handle just about anything.

Except missing my girls.

I know Paula was excited to go on this trip and get a break from the challenges that come with being the Wilde Family CEO and handling Madison and Sydney one-on-two for most of the day, every day. While I would take them on every trip if I could – and have shortened my other trips as much as possible with my flight schedules to get back ASAP – she certainly deserves the break and a little one-on-one time with her lesser half.

That said, I don’t do well with being away from them for anything longer than the several hours I spend at Lambeau Field each day. I know this doesn’t make me unique – I am sure all of you moms and dads, especially ones who haven’t been doing this for a long time, feel the same way. (Veteran parents I talk to tell me I will grow to appreciate this time without the kids in the future.)

Madison and Sydney were in very good hands. Paula’s aunt and uncle, who are my age and have 13-, 10- and 6-year old kids, essentially moved into our house for the weekend, making the girls feel at home because they were, in fact, still at home. So I know I had nothing to worry about.

Still, my AirTran flight from LAX to Milwaukee couldn’t take off soon enough, and the drive back to the greater Green Bay Metroplex will seem longer than the usual hour and 45 minutes.

When I was single, or even when Paula and I were newlyweds before Madison’s arrival, a trip to San Diego would have been the highlight of the season, regardless of weather, sunburn or setback. Now, while I won’t say goodbye to San Diego the way Will Farrell’s Ron Burgundy did one night in Anchorman, I’m just glad it’s over.