Wow. Lots of anniversaries this month. First, I had hoped to post some about the State of the Union (short version: somewhere between "completely screwed" and "screwed," but getting better, if slowly.) However, a back injury has made it difficult to do much of late, so once I can do longer posts, I will.

Now, what exactly do those numbers mean?

Well, the 29-Again! is for my wife, who just a mere fifteen minutes before me turned 29. Again. We'll just leave it at that. However I will say that she did use the phrase "whipper-snapper" recently... Ouch.

The 34 is what I became fifteen minutes later. It is both odd and cool for my wife and I to have our birthdays be mere minutes (alright - minutes and a few years) apart; I just keep reminding her that she missed a perfect birthday by fifteen minutes... At which point she just smacks me.

The 18 is for Sammy, who turned 18 months old this month, and is more and more quickly becoming both a joy and a terror as she becomes more self aware, more talkative, more adventurous, and more aware that it's fun to dive off the couch.

The ten is for this very ICRVN, which is approaching ten years of existence. I certainly did not think that when I starting this lark that I would still be adding to it ten years on, and certainly not adding pictures of my very own child. I guess I gotta grow up soon, hunh?

Nah.

Since I'll be posting later (probably next week) a lot of prose, how about some photos?

Here's a picture of Sam enjoying her first real snowfall from the window. I say first "real" snowfall, as it is the first one that she is really aware of while watching it. I got lucky with the lighting, honestly...

This next picture is (and I swear this is not a set up) of Sam towards the end of a diaper change. This is completely random and happenstance. My wife was changing Sam, and Sam just picked up a magazine during the process and starting flipping pages. The topic of the magazine, the angle, everything, is completely as it happened. Nothing was altered either by hand (well, we did adjust the diaper for... coverage) or via a photo editor.