2 Years

24 months, 104 weeks, 731* days.

At 6:35 pm on April 23, 2007, a little person was brought into our lives, and we haven't looked back since.

A lot changes when you have a kid. Most of which we expected, but there are plenty of things that you simply cannot fathom until it happens to you. It reminds me of the conversation between McCoy and Spock at the beginning of Star Trek IV. McCoy wants to know what it was like to be dead, but Spock says such a conversation would be meaningless since they lacked a "common frame of reference" when discussing it. I suppose the same thing can be said about parenting. You really can't fully know what it's like until you do it.

To me, the most fascinating thing about a child is watching them learn things. At first, they are little more than input/output devices that make noise for (seemingly) no reason. Over time, they gradually being doing actual things in response to the world around them.

The Kid smiled at me for the first time on June 23, 2007. I remember that like it was yesterday. She was sitting with The Wife, and when I walked into the room, she smiled.

She became more mobile, crawling, and eventually walking by her first birthday. And, of course, talking.

In the past year, she's become a little person, with moods other than "crying" and "not crying". She knows how to ask for things (by saying please) and engaging in what is, for her, conversation. Gone are the days where her world consisted exclusively of nouns, and now has verbs, adverbs and adjectives.

She's no longer afraid of things like grass and dirt. In fact, she's now entered the "dirty" phase, which makes getting pictures of her not encrusted in either food or mud a bit of a challenge. I love it.

We've got a big party planned for Saturday, so I'll have pictures to post after that.

* Leap year...