Happy Birthday, Little Cuter

Though you are hardly little any more. 

You are a grown-up.   A college graduate.  A homeowner.  A wife.  A mother.  You've mastered every step along the way, with color coded files in easily accessible binders, with tables of contents and the answers to all the questions that might arise.

You love your routine, though you are not stymied by it.  Knowing where to be and what to do and when to do it simplifies your life.  I've learned to stand back and watch it work..... most of the time, anyway.  It's hard to be still, to refrain from offering suggestions, to point out a simpler method..... but you know that.  You're a Mommy yourself.

I listen to FlapJilly describe her own "golden curls, like Rapunzel"  but insist that her hair "is black, like Mommy's" when I offer her a yellow crayon to finish her self-portrait.  Her rueful expression when describing the impact of her impending big sisterhood - "babies cry a lot" - is the same one you had when Murphy-the-Wonder-Dog ate your underwear.  "Whatcha gonna do?" it says, with a little bit more sense of love than regret.

Acorns and Oaks and all that.  She's her own person, but there's a lot of you in there, too.

The part that zips her own jacket, though she's only three?  You learned to tie your shoes at the same age, in the back seat of Daddooooo's Oldsmobile, in the twenty minutes between Rockville Center and Oceanside.

The part that picks her own clothes and accessories, adorning herself with the right amount of swirl and glitter and color?  You would run back upstairs to change if I noticed that all the pieces of your outfit matched; you preferred stripes with plaid and would have none of that but it all goes together so nicely pleading.

The part that jumps high and wide and flips and flops and throws and runs?  I go back to a soccer game on the middle school field, your brother and a friend biking up just as you raced down the sideline and scored a very pretty goal. "Wow! Who was that??!!" wondered the friend.  "Oh, that's my sister," Big Cuter not-so-humbly replied. 

FlapJilly's delight while driving her pink Mustang around the backyard mirrors your joy while driving my Audi up and down the long driveway in Marin.  Her love of books? You're an English major. 

Is it fun for you to watch her grow, looking for yourself, for SIR, for the pieces that are uniquely her own?  That never goes away.  I see you doing things that G'ma did for me.  I see you mastering techniques (french braids) that eluded me.  I see you struggle with my struggles and overcome my obstacles.  I watch your choices and I admire you.

I love you every minute of every day, my little girl.  Every single day, but especially this one, when you joined the party.

Happy Birthday, Little Cuter!  Happy Birthday to you.