Now you are ten. Two whole hands. I remember when you were one hand. You were so excited. Now you are both. You are all of the fingers. You are all of the toes. You are the base of our mathematics, double digits, which should be cool because you love math and are quite good at it. I think it’s time to learn decimals. Today you are no decimals. You are 10.0.
We are now more than halfway through our journey together. Not the whole journey, but the specific voyage of your childhood, the one where you live with me and I get to pretend I am in charge and know things. You know things too. You know things I don’t know. Sometimes that’s hard to wrap my head around. How could you know things I don’t? I made you! You are an experiment gone out of control. You are Frankenstein’s monster. You are Ultron. You are Pinocchio. You are a real girl. How weird is that?
These are the times of shifting sand. You and I both see the writing on the wall, just as we both pretend that we don’t. I don’t think you want to grow up any more than I want you to. But you will. And you are. And you are doing it well. Thanks for not going too fast. Thanks for reigning me in when I speed up, and for not hating me (yet) when I reign you in. For Christmas we got you an iPod. You were sad that you didn’t get dolls and toys. Thank you for that. Today you got a dollhouse, and you have been playing with it all morning. Thank you for that. Thank you for being a kid today. I will try to remember that you are just a kid. I will try to remember that you are almost a teenager. I will try to let you be you at the pace of yourself. And if you want to grow up at the same speed you eat dinner? I’m okay with that too. We have all the time in world. No rush.
Happy birthday.