Post 1,000!

Madison and Mommy came to the office today to hang out, and if you look carefully at the picture above, you can see that she brought friends! No, I'm not talking about the two guys seated next to her: I'm talking about the fairies they are playing with. Madison is having a good time having an adventure with some fairies from Pixie Hollow.

The weather today was outstandingly yucky. I wish that were something a meteorologist would say, in official terms: "As you can see from the doppler, atmospheric conditions are ideal as this cold weather front pushes from the west to create a deluge of outstanding yucky."

Okay, as the title of this post suggests, this is in fact post #1,000. It seems that there should be some celebration called for, perhaps a celebratory dance or something. I'll save that for later. But perhaps now is a good a time as any to remember...

Okay, so I can't remember everything. But that's the whole point of this blog. I can't remember everything we do every single day. Even typing all this out, we can't record every single moment with Madison.

A few years ago, we were celebrating our first year with Madison. The time had flown by! I had plenty of photographs, and good stories to tell. But I realized there were certain things that were falling into the cracks of time - and we wouldn't be able to tell Madison's complete story later on in life. The big example was that I completely forgot we took her to see the King Tut exhibit, and the Terracotta Warriors too. We weren't allowed to bring cameras in the museum areas, so there wasn't any photographic documentation of this. Now, you're thinking: "Just how forgetful can you be?" Pretty forgetful, in the scope of all of those weeks put together.

I didn't want to be obsessed with every single moment in time, as I no doubt am sounding right now as I attempt to type this out. But I did want Madison to be able to look back some day and see a few things:

1. We wanted her to see what she did and when she did it. This seems rather obvious, of course. But there are so many "firsts" in this blog. When did she first try an Oreo cookie? When did she first try roller skating? What was Christmas like in '09? Some of these questions have answers that could have been erased by the relentlessness of time. But by spending a few minutes every night (okay, about a half-hour), Daddy takes the time to record it all as best as he can remember at the end of the day. And, sometimes a day later.

2. We wanted her to learn about Mommy and Daddy too. This is in essence a letter to Madison. A really, really long letter! Through life, she'll learn a lot about us - but there might be a thing or two learned along the way in this blog as well. I believe "Life Lessons" is one of those categories I'll be setting up soon enough - those things we learned the hard way. This was a great quote I just heard: "Listen to good instruction. Learning by experience eats up the most valuable asset you have: time."

3. We wanted her to know how much we love her. Hopefully she'll see all we do here as an expression of our love. Other might see it as an expression of insanity, but we really do want to make every moment count with her. This blog challenges Daddy not to waste a day of time with her, and make every one have value in her life.

So on July 16, 2009, we began to type our exploits! And for every day since, we have a journal entry to describe just a bit of our time together that day. And 1,000 posts later here we are in February of 2012.

I'm not sure how long this blog will go on, but for these very important early years, we'll do our best to keep it going however we can. At least for another 1,000 posts! Just think, she'll be eight years old then! And, we might just keep it going another 1,000 after that...

But this blog can't look forward so much - it's purpose is to look back. And looking back, even with the briefest glance, we can see how blessed we have been with God's grace over our family.

"So there you go." - Gus Portokalos