Our first dance was set to “The Violet Hour” by Sea Wolf (if you haven’t heard it, why the hell not???). We spent weeks beforehand meticulously learning our dance moves, and when the day finally arrived I was just happy not to have tripped her in front of everyone. Clearly, this is what love is.

We oftentimes have vastly different musical tastes (I usually can’t stand country for too long, no matter how much pop they infuse it with, and she just can’t seem to get on board with the whole “Babies love Nine Inch Nails!” argument), but Sea Wolf has been a shared love since we first got together. And yes, I’ll totally overlook the fact that it was introduced to us by one of the Twilight movies.

Either way, it seemed like the perfect song to cover for a special occasion.

There are many ways to go about saying “I love you” other than, y’know, the most obvious one. I’m not always great about expressing it as much as I should (though I say it plenty), but this time I wanted to say it with one of the most valuable possessions I have to give: time.

Ask anyone with kids and they’ll probably tell you that there’s no such thing as “free time” after babies. I can definitely understand that to a certain degree now. Most of my day consists of work, baby, wife (which usually consists of a few minutes to talk about our day), and sleep. Of course, in between all that I have to find time to shovel food into my piehole. So when I do have free time, it’s pretty amazing. Getting to go out and play photographer is unbelievably liberating, but even sitting down to read at the end of the day is simply beyond words. So my “me time” is something I’ve come to covet quite a bit (“My preeeeeecious…”). So what better way to say it? Well, I suppose there’s jewelry and all that, but that’s beside the point.

With our anniversary coming up, it was the perfect opportunity to work on this project, but with free time being much more scarce these days I had to get started pronto. Free time is one thing, but free time when I could work on a super-secret project? That’s something completely different. It took over a month to put together (with a whole lot of hustle towards the end), but thanks to lots and lots of baby naps, a children’s percussion set from Guitar Center, and mixing input from an extra pair of ears (thanks Parag!), it all came together quite well.

Happy anniversary, Red. This is me saying “I love you.”

(Listen to it loud or with headphones and in HD)