Again today I woke early, before six. Once up, it's usually impossible to fall asleep again, so I get many mornings like this ... soundless and dark.

Yesterday was my birthday. I got seven Facebook congrats, one instant message, two emails, one phone call, and I told one person. My wife and three-year-old daughter sang many times, notably in the morning before presents, and at dinner in a restaurant singing with a cake slice. For the most part, I received the "you look like a monkey" version, which Isabel learned from the movie Madagascar.

I'm not one to think much about getting older. Usually I have to do arithmetic with my birth year to figure out how old I am. Life is a stream of moments, and how we choose to measure them is pretty much arbitrary. I'm often the complete geek and remind people what their age would be in hexidecimal. This year I'm 2B hex. If we had sixteen fingers instead of ten we'd be stressing about entirely different (and less frequent) milestones.

Other than aging, my birthday thoughts turn to missing my mom. Six years ago on my birthday was the last time I spoke with her. She was too weak to sing, so I sang the song myself. Yesterday I looked up and saw it was 6:02pm (my birth minute) and felt pretty sad, since that's when my mom would always call me to sing.

Yesterday I told Isabel about this, then went back to tickling her. Sadness was promptly replaced with joy. What a gift to have this giggling little girl.