Happy Birthday, B!

My sweet girl is 10 years old.

Where has the last decade gone?

It slipped by with Blue's Clues episodes, scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning for 15 months, dress up beads, tricycles to bicycles to scooters to roller blades, reading Junie B. Jones one day and Harry Potter the next (or so it seemed), missing teeth, glasses, a yucky teacher here, but a fantastic teacher there, friends, responsibilities, baptism, Activity Days, drawings galore, computer games out the yin-yang, and most recently...the Wii.

Many times I recollect on little man's days or K's latest "explosion", but my girl, B is a serious force to be reckoned with. She is slowly cutting out her own little niche in the family as the one who we need to be able to depend on. She is learning and being trained in the fine art of babysitting.

B may have her moments of hormonal interludes, but she's pretty darn balanced.

B is one of those rare souls who loves easily. She has never met a stranger. She assumes that everyone is her friend and she will remain loyal to the bitter end. She is goofy and silly and for now, awkward in her 5'2" body, but she is beautiful...inside and out. She has legs up to her armpits, which we will be hiding from the public eye for approximately the next 13 years. She is blessedly naive. She is still a little girl at heart, but her independent streak does rear its ugly head a little more often these days. She is so smart it's scary, tries out new words in her everyday B-speak (sometimes they don't always make sense, but at least she tries and totally entertains us in the process), she is a total bookworm...she devours books (a Harry Potter a day...no lie), she loves to draw (is really pretty good at it...of course I'm not biased at all), she writes stories, she has the BEST imagination, she adores animals and is always begging for some new breed of some sort to adopt, she would live in the swimming pool if allowed, she LOVES to play outside with her friends in the neighborhood. Not a day goes by that some kid in the neighborhood is not knocking at our door wanting B to come out and play.

Sometimes she needs to be a tad more mature than she chooses to be, but I'm okay with that for now. I love my B. She is a good kid. She is lazy, but she recognizes that fact in a heartbeat. When we need her to step up, she comes through like a rock star. Her focus is hard to maintain, but she tries to please no matter. And if you know B, you'll agree that it's almost impossible to think of her without mentioning her hugs. That girl loves to hug! Sometimes she can be a little leechy, but I wouldn't trade that kind of open-hearted affection for the world.

She is a daddy's girl through and through, but she loves me enough to make it okay.

Happy Birthday, my silly, goofy, loving, beautiful 10-year-old.

You bring me smiles. You give me joy.