"Hi"

Tonight the following occurred:

Audrey: "Mommy, let me show you something magical!"

Mommy: "Okay."

Audrey takes a sticky note and sets it down on the leather ottoman. Taking a marker, she slowly writes the word "Hi" on the paper.

Audrey, showing what she's done to Mommy, "See?"

Mommy: "Yeaaay Audrey! Daddy, look!"

I look and sure enough - the word "Hi" is written there. We were stunned.

Audrey's first written word.

THINGS PEOPLE ONCE SAID

"A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for." ~Unknown
"Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter." ~Joseph Addison
"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself." ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994
"Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again." ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968
"There are three stages of a man’s life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus." ~Unknown
"A father carries pictures where his money used to be." ~Unknown
"Disobedience is the infant’s first step toward autonomy." ~Lewis Mumford

2 and a half