A ministones milestone

The actual one year anniversary of this blog came and went a few weeks ago without me noticing. I was far too caught up in the day's household drama to be thinking about such things.

In a fortuitous twist, I get a second chance to celebrate my accomplishment today. No one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain to me why the Hebrew calendar doesn't follow the secular calendar, nor why it seems to move around so much each year. It's always seemed like an elaborate joke the rabbis play on us each year ("Hmmm... how about Chanukah in November? That'll sure throw 'em!" "Sounds great. And let's put Passover at the same time as Easter and see how those interfaith heathens handle the hot cross buns!"), but this year they've done me a favor. Tonight, the holiday of Rosh Hashanah -- the Jewish new year -- begins, and since I started this blog as a new year's resolution last Rosh Hashanah, that certainly makes today an anniversary. (Have you ever noticed how Jews can explain away absolutely anything?)

I've never actually kept a new year's resolution before, and truth be told, I didn't really expect too much to come of this one. I was sure I'd only have a month's worth of entries at best before I ran out of things to talk about. I guess I sort of underestimated the amount of fodder two small kids can provide. The ramp up was slow at first -- a few tentative entries here and there, a couple of memories stored here for safekeeping. Then I guess I just kind of got on a roll and after that, it was anything goes around here. I rediscovered how much I love to write and I found in blogging an outlet for my frustrations and my joys far more personally satisfying than bitching in playgroup or bragging at the playground. Sometimes I've learned things along the way, other times I've simply recorded my thoughts and experiences. Writing all of those things down would have been worth it for the sake of the writing itself, but the memories I'm left with make this blog even more valuable than I could have anticipated.

There are well over 200 entries in this blog right now, every one of them a concrete memory from the past year. Some of them, I'd rather forget, others I'm sure I'd remember with or without this blog. But I know that this stage of my life will always stay sharp in my mind thanks to the memories I've stored here.

A lot has happened in a year -- Julia and Evan are a year older and along the way, I've been witness to first steps and first teeth, potty training failure and success , paci weaning failure and success, traditional weaning (no failure there, though the success was bittersweet), rites of passage and more than my share of tantrums. My kids have learned some stuff, I've learned some stuff and we've all learned that we still have a lot left to learn. I've made some great unexpected friends through blogging and, even more unexpected, I've gotten a little closer to some of the people who matter the most to me.

I don't know when or how I'll share this blog with my kids, but someday, I know they'll be reading this. I hope that it will show them a side of me that they might not know, as well as a side of themselves that they'd otherwise have forgotten. Maybe, if they find themselves writing the kind of revisionist history my brother and I seem to have now, it will even resolve a few disagreements over what really happened. No matter what, I trust that when they read this, they will know that they were loved and cherished, not in some silly fairy tale way, but in the real, imperfect, messy and fallible way that is real life.

As Rosh Hashanah begins and we embark on another year, it's fun to reread my archives and delve into the past one a bit. I wrote some funny stuff and some poignant stuff and some thoughtful stuff and some complete crap this year. Next year there will no doubt be more of the same. It's hard to imagine what I'll find to say after all I've already written here, but I suspect I'll think of something. I always do.

Some thing never change, and no one in this household wants to join me in dipping apples in honey for Rosh Hashanah yet again this year. But I could care less. Because this year, I can look back at what I've written here and see documented proof that it didn't matter in the end. Our year was sweet anyway.