Harper turns 2 today.

It's very weird for me to say that because, as usual, I find it an overwhelming shock that I happen to have a child, let alone two of them, let alone one who happens to be two years old.

Harper celebrated her birthday by sleeping in a little bit and then getting up and being happy all morning.  It must be my birthday too!

Two years ago today, the hospital allowed us to take home this small mewling mass of human.  These last two years have been fraught with all sorts of monumental life changes, including, but not limited to, purchasing a house, moving into said house with a newborn, birth of a second lovely daughter and a major job change for Sara.

Through it all, I've been keeping up with this blog, sporadically.

My mom, her partner and my grandmother came to visit us two weeks ago.  It was a wonderful visit and I'm very glad that they were able to come out and see the girls.(I suppose they came to see me too)  While here, I was explaining to my mom how I've started using Twitter as a marketing tool for the blog in an effort to drive traffic here.  My grandmother asked me why I wanted to do this, and what the purpose was of having the blog in the first place, not that she didn't love reading about how I get covered in bodily fluids and the like.

I explained to her that increased traffic means increased comments and feedback, which in turn allows me to improve the blog.  I want to make it something that people want to read.  She asked me why, wondering if I was making money off of it, or if it was ego, or something else.  I gave her an answer right off the top of my head, which I think makes it more true.

I told her that yes, I want people to like it because at some point, monetization may be an option, but what I really want, more than anything, is a record of my exploits and adventures as a parent.  I want, upon their high school or college graduations, be able to turn this blog into a small book that tells the story of their lives from my perspective.

We all live our lives with ourselves as the main characters.  We are our harshest critics and greatest proponents but there is a limited amount of empathy that we can have.  We never get to live our lives though someone else's eyes.  I want my girls to be able to look back and see what it was like for me and Sara without the benefit of our hindsight.

To fully answer my grandmother, I want this blog to be an ongoing birthday gift to both of my daughters, a chronicle of their lives.

With that in mind, I'm going to take the easy way out and link you to two previous posts.  The first is the first real post that I wrote as a dad.  I know it is just that because I brilliantly titled it First Real Post as a Dad.  The second link is to the post from Harper's first birthday.  It is filled with typical birthday wishes that I will reiterate again this year.

Happy birthday, Harper.  I love you more than I can ever express in mere words.

Also, if someone wanted to turn the blog into a book and sell it to millions of people as either a guide to parenting, or a warning, that would be a great gift for the girls as well. :-)

To leave you with a smile, here's a video of Harper feeding Brynn this morning.