trying to shelve my resentment and anger and hurt. donning the mask i have to wear today for lyli and scarleht's party, to pretend steph and my's relationship is doing better than it is. but this day is about them, not us. they are two years and two days old today and i cannot believe it is true. 732 days have passed since that strange time in the hospital in Tacoma when you entered this world and we were still fooling ourselves.

i love you both more than words or time can tell. i express it in little doses each day, unseen by any eyes save yours. it's always the real workers that don't get any credit, toiling away under cover of darkness or blindness or ignorance while the world goes on its merry tragic way. blink and two months are gone. just gone. and you have too few memories of it all. and next year's tears will wash away our sins of today and tomorrow we won't even remember the pain or the love or the lessons we tried to teach.

you soak up my lessons, exhausting me at times but always pushing to learn more, absorb more, say more, try ten new things before some noontime hits for nap and snack time. sometime i hope you can look back and be grateful for this breath of fresh air I am trying to start you off with, this break frmo it all before the real world sets in and screws everything up. but for now we have the trees, we feed the birds, we clean the house, read books, talk about the world and what is in it. for now we try to simply be by being simple and hope the world will leave us alone for a spell.