Work In Progress: there's this girl

she came into the world yelling and full of personality. she made sure we all knew she was here, and she was going to play by her own rules.

she's still pretty much just like that.

she is sweet and creative and funny and full of every emotion you can imagine. and likes to switch it up without warning.

she loves foods other kids won't touch, but she won't eat a bite of pizza to save her life.

and she will go into full drama queen mode if you try to make her.

she could be outside all day, every day looking for bugs.

every book she brings home from the library is either about animals or fairies. and on the first library day of the new school year, she managed to find a book series all about animal fairies.

score.

she and her brother adore each other, and have since day one.

the downside of that is she's convinced she's a 12-year-old boy, and should get to do everything he gets to do, right down to airsoft guns and burping.

it's hard to believe she's seven already, as of 4:07 this morning. she's still my little girl, and i refuse to accept how quickly she's growing. i know the days are numbered when she'll let me brush her hair and pat her bottom and snuggle up with her to watch her favorite shows: miss spider's sunnypatch friends and how it's made. soon, she'll be an emotional (wait ... she already is), eye-rolling (oh ... she does that already, too), door-slamming (uh ... yup) teenager who intermittently tolerates and ignores her parents. maybe not ... maybe we'll get lucky. i fear the day the boys figure out how gorgeous she is, and fear even more the day *she* figures it out. if i could keep her mud-strained knees, bruised shins, tangled hair, digging for bugs-ness forever, i would.

because right now is pretty great.

and today, as per her birthday wishes, i am having lunch with her at school - arby's ham & cheese sandwich and those "potato things" (??) - and reading "how the grinch stole christmas" to her class, she'll have a possible playdate with a friend down the street after school, dinner at india palace, and a pumpkin pie with candles on it for dessert.

because for all the things about her that are tricky and frustrating, there are twice as many things that are simple and perfectly her.