It started with a halfhearted promise to my wife. I wanted to do something significant for my newborn daughter so I promised to write in a journal every day for the first year of her life. Today I am writing in one for my fourth child.

Writing can be a funny thing. Like anything we want to change in our lives, a simple daily routine can seem monotonous, minuscule drops in a bucket.

One paragraph, one page.

Nothing of importance.

But what began with a single word is now a little pile of journals.

I don’t have a lot of words packed in the bindings of these books but I hope they will be cherished. After all, they are about birth, the struggle for sleep, trying to slow down and savor the quiet moments, and the joy our brief lives can have.

I have written hundreds of thousands of words and will certainly write more still, but there will be nothing I am more proud of than these simple looking journals.