Happy Anniversary!

It's been two years!

Us, newly minted as Mr. and Mrs.

We still remember the big day like it was yesterday. Apparently our photographer didn't realize how long it's been either, because we just got our wedding album this week.

Anyway, hoorah for marriage! Hooray for love! Sam's my favorite! I'm his! (He told me.)

I wondered a long time ago (before Sam and definitely before Cate) what I would say when my future children would inevitably ask me who my favorite was. I decided on my answer long before I met Sam: "Daddy's my favorite," I would tell them. Of course, I've thought a lot about this since Miss Cate came along. I love her oodles. Feeding her and changing her and bathing her and reading to her and snuggling her and playing with her and clapping for her is an unparalleled blessing and privilege. She is the cutest thing I've ever seen.

But even now I am so aware that Sam and I have each other forever and her only for now--that some day she will grow up and she will leave us. I think of her as a future grown up, I imagine her going to kindergarten and then to junior high and off to high school and college, and I believe my friends who tell me it will happen in the blink of an eye. I get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I think about it (I know, she can't even walk yet), but the fact is she will grow up, and get married, and it will all start again, as it always has. And it seems to me that there are only a few things I can really give her along the way. And one of them--the confidence and certainty and security that will come with knowing she and her future siblings are decidedly tied for my second favorite--seems like the one to think about on the occasion of our anniversary.

How, you might ask, can Sam compete with this little bundle of cuteness:

It's not easy, but he does it. Day after day after day, he does it.

For our anniversary, Cate and I went on a tour of six Houston bakeries. We picked up a few treats from each of them, brought them home, and made this display to welcome Sam home from work:

Here are some close-ups:

Let me assure you that none of these treats came close to comparing to my Sam's treats. But we ate them anyway.

Sam gave me this Norman Rockwell print I've had my eye on for a while:

Don't you think that, in another era, this is how Sam and I could have met?

I love you, Sam. You mean the world to me. And Cate, you mean at least 9 billion planets to us both.