Happy New Year 2013

A new year. Another chance to erase the slate and try again, even if that chance is a bit contrived, coinciding only with ripping a page off your calendar. Yet despite all of the things that I could grumble about and fret over, there is one constant that I have enjoyed on the first day of each new year for the past 15 years. Today marks the day my daughter was born and provided me with the greatest blessing that I have ever received.

I have seen so many self-help books for parents about how to "manage" their children or "survive" their children. I never had to give a thought to the odious ones, terrible twos, traumatic threes, fearsome fours, frigid fives, sickening sixes, sucky sevens, eerie eights, nonsensical nines, threatening tens, excessive elevens, tremulous twelves, thorny thirteens, or the frightful fourteens. Given this great run, I am sure that there will be no foul fifteens, and even if there were some bumps along the way, at least we would be on the ride together. Happy birthday angel face.

Oh, and happy new year to my faithful readers.