Fittingly, Harper celebrated her fifth birthday this year with five parties spread out over the month. She’s a remarkable girl, full of vim and vigor. We’re lucky to have her and if you’ve had the good fortune to spend time with her you’re better for it.
“This is the best day of my life”
Harper, on her birthday.
It’s impossible to have a low-key birthday when you have four young children. Fortunately for me, this is as low-key as I ever want life to be.
Our youngest turned two years old as of a few minutes ago and we celebrated with friends earlier today. She’s the third child we’ve celebrated hitting the second anniversary and the party felt in some ways like echoes of past parties.
Celebrating the same milestones with different children is a distinct pleasure of parenthood. In our case, we usually celebrate the same milestones with each child multiple times. For birthdays we usually have a party at our home, at my mother-in-law’s, sometimes with my parents and occasionally with my father-in-law’s family. Often we’ll have a just-our-family party too. So for every birthday we’ll hold at least three festivities.
Tomorrow Arden will turn two for real. Next weekend we’ll have a party with Jenn’s family. All told, I think by next Sunday we’ll have reached our 11th party celebrating the second year of one of our children. Perhaps that’s excessive. Then again, for most of human history getting out of infancy was a terrible struggle. So we’ll continue to err on the side of celebration and rejoice that we’ve had the company of our dear daughter for two years.
Jenn turns 30 on Friday. I’m working on a 30-word tribute to commemorate the milestone. If you want to relay something more than just “happy birthday” to her, you can share your own 30-word homage below. Poems, adjectives, stories—all are acceptable formats. Just try to stick to 30 words even if you have to stop writing mid-sentence.
I’m 32 years old today. In honor of the new age and to honor the year coming up, I’m adopting 32 habits for this year. Some of the habits are new, some I am re-adopting and some are present habits I’m just formalizing for the year. The only wrinkle in this plan is that I haven’t figured all 32 habits. But I have figured out the first: Write more.
My brain may have already peaked and started its decline, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept an atrophic mind. There are lots of ways to fight mental decline, but many of them are incredibly dull. Writing should help stem the cerebral crash without accelerating my entrance to the nursing home subculture.
There’s no specific style or format I’m looking to start. Simply blogging more regularly would be an improvement. But I’d like to try and wrestle some fiction and poetry this year too. Perhaps I’ll finally put an end to my habit of stopping after the first paragraph which has marred my every attempt at creative writing to point.
The hardest thing about writing can often be finding something worth writing about. Fortunately with 31 habits left to go I shouldn’t be short on subjects. Assignments are welcome too if you want help me stay on point this year.
