Today Is Very Special To Me

Today is a very special New Year's Day.  And not in the way that every episode of the 90's teen sitcom Blossom was a "very special episode of Blossom".

Ryleigh with Daddy

For those who don't know, I'm a proud daddy of a beautiful baby girl.  She's so cool, and so cute too, that she might even have a bigger fan club than my own.  I certainly have no problem talking about her for hours on end.

But I've always been very quiet about the horrible January 1st from a few years ago. 

You see, on New Year's Day 2009 my wife went through a miscarriage.  It was going to be our first child.  It was really hard to deal with, even more so for her... at least I can only imagine.  It really put a dark cloud on New Year's Day that was hard to escape from.  While many women suffer through miscarriages every single day, and they are really quite common especially in first pregnancies, it makes it worse to have it on a day that's already marked on the calendar as an event.  The loss made it hard to think of January 1st as a "Happy New Year".  And it sticks with you for a long time after.  Those of you who have gone through it know what I'm talking about. 

My way of dealing with the sorrow was to just put it off to the side.  Ignore it.  I thought that talking about it would only make it more real.  I just wanted it to all go away and be over with.

Well, that's finally happening today.  New Year's can be happy again.  I've been looking forward to today for a while now.  I can spend the day with my little Ryleigh, and my beautiful wife, and we can all kick 2012 off as a family.