My daughter is walking, running, jumping, sliding, talking, and becoming quite the little person. That pretty much sums up the 23 unfinished blog entries that I have written over the past 6 months. There just never seems to be enough time to sit and finish what I have begun when it comes to the blog. I am going to keep trying to get the older ones finished but it might be more beneficial if I just write and finish a current entry.

So many things have changed since my last entry that it's hard to know where to begin.

My daughter celebrated her first birthday on December 10 and it is so amazing how fast the time has passed. People have often told my wife and I to enjoy these times because before you know it they are gone. I didn't always believe it but now I can say with certainty that the first year of my daughter's life has gone by in the blink of an eye. It seems like it was just weeks ago when I watched her first come into our world yet now she has become our world. My wife often tells our daughter how happy it made us that she chose us to be her parents. At first that statement didn't really sink in with me but over time I have come to appreciate it more. That expression has come to symbolize to me how our daughter has changed our lives. Nothing is solely about my wife and I anymore, everything is about our daughter. That is an amazing statement for me to make and it says how far along this journey we all have come in this first year.

Let me begin this blog by apologizing to those people who read it. I have been quite lax in my responsibilities lately with regards to writing the blog. Being a stay at home dad with my daughter is a lot more time intensive than I thought it would be. Everyday she is doing something new and different, she is becoming her own little person and I don't want to miss any of it. I also have college to contend with and it is stealing blog time as I am taking one class too many.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Henry Adams

Some old friends from North Carolina came to visit with us today and we went out to lunch. We also invited some friends that have a three and a half year old and a two and a half year old. I noticed that the people at the table behind ours were getting annoyed that the toddlers were making noise and acting like toddlers do. Not acting like bad toddlers, they were just acting the way young children act. They were talking a little loud and they were excited to be out at a restaurant. The behavior of the adults at the table behind us sparked some thought in my mind about how I acted before we had kids, how I viewed kids in general and how those views have changed since becoming a dad.

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
Ovid (43BC-17AD)

Well thanks to my sister, I have a new TV addiction that thankfully is disappointing me. 24 seemed like a good idea, it seemed like something that I would like, I actually really liked the first 4 or 5 hours of this season. Now, the show is really ridiculous and I am sad to say that I still am watching it. Martial Law in Los Angeles to protect 200000 people? Come on...the government tries to declare martial law in LA and 200000 bloods and crips alone would be dead before nightfall. The OJ riots would seem like a day at Disneyland compared to how that city would erupt if any government tried what is being done on 24. Then, as if to add salt to my wound, martial law is declared and they never talk about it again! I know I need to suspend my disbelief but I just can't take it anymore with this show. It's on at 9pm on Monday and I really can't wait to see what happens to President Palmer's brother this week. If you don't know what that means, save yourself 24 hours of TV viewing and don't try to figure it out.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.
William Shakespeare

We watched the movie March of the Penguins tonight. If you haven't seen it yet, don't worry there isn't much of a plot that I am going to ruin for you. Basically, the penguins walk, they mate, the mom penguins leave, the dad penguins keep the eggs warm for the two months the moms are gone, the moms come back, the dads leave, then the dads come back, and finally the parents leave together. The chicks live on their own from that point forward.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Aristotle

It seems that people can, sometimes, do the right thing. It was announced recently by the Department of the Interior that the Great Lakes gray wolves are no longer endangered. This is big news, it proves that with the right management people and animals can share this earth and everyone can get along.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

After I wrote 'The Show Must Go On' a week ago I decided that I was not

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles

We took our daughter in for her first round of vaccinations today. We asked the doctor about 21 questions, Pretty routine stuff, all straight forward first time parent type questions. He spent a lot of time, for a doctor at least, explaining what all the different things mean, how they affect our daughter and what we should do in response to them. The doctor was even able to make my wife relax a little bit about calling their office after hours.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln

Working and being a dad and going to college and trying to stay in shape (or I should say trying to get into shape) is beginning to wear me down. I know that I should be excited, I should look forward to each new day with a fresh sense of enthusiasm but I am too tired to do that. I am unmotivated in school, very unmotivated at work and extremely reluctant to get into shape. I went back to school because our daughter was on the way and I was a little uncomfortable not having a degree. Being an air traffic controller is more or less a dead end job. The skills necessary for success in air traffic control do not transfer to any other job. There is only one employer, the Federal Aviation Administration, so if I am unhappy working for them or they fire me, I am going to be in serious trouble. Before my daughter came along I didn't concern myself much with a back up plan. Now that she is here I don't want to miss out on a moment that I could be with her.