Five years ago on September 18th my wife called me at work to tell me she was going into labor. It wasn't totally unexpected - our second-born was due on September 15th - and my wife had first experienced phantom labor (is that a thing? I think it's a thing.) as early as September 10th or so.

But the fact that for most of the month of September the doctor was telling us she was due "any day now" (this is the only one of our three daughters we knew was going to be a 'she', incidentally) had us on pins and needles.

But finally, at just before 12:30 on this Thursday afternoon I handed over my lesson plans to the sub being put in place for me and I went to meet my wife at the hospital.

It would be about another twelve hours before we had ourselves a baby.

It wasn't like twelve straight hours of labor.

In fact, one of my favorite stories about the birth of our second daughter is how laid back it was.

Whereas for our first-born everything had to be perfect - the right music had to be playing, we had to do the correct breathing exercises, I had to make sure I didn't pass out - by the time we had our second we were old pros.

I liked to joke that with the first we had all kinds of CDs to make sure the ambience was just so - with our second, we sat around waiting for the contractions while watching 'Hole In The Wall' on Fox. (This was a show with a wall that moved towards a person on a plank. The wall had a cutout of a person in a weird position. The person on the plank needed to assume that position to make it through the titular 'hole in the wall' or else get knocked off the plank into water or muck or something. I'll never forget that show or the role it played in our family's life.)

Anyway, our daughter was born a little after midnight...and she is certainly worth all that waiting.

Today she turns five.

They were five pretty quick years - faster than an approaching wall to a contestant on the short-lived Fox show "Hole In The Wall."

And in about two weeks' time, I'll be telling you a similar story about how fast seven years have gone by.