Ten Today

She gave up on birthday parties last year, choosing 'special excursions with special friends' instead. And yet tonight--after all four of us went to breakfast at IHOP, made a trip to the movie theater to see Hairspray (again, for Em), and feasted on barbequed ribs (though, frankly, they sort of sucked...you still win the rib-off, Mom)--somehow there was an ice-cream cake from Baskin Robbins, and somehow there were six neighborhood kids in my house, only two of them mine, who were eating it, and somehow there were presents. Somehow, it felt like a party. Without the work and the expense. And she'll still get 'special excursions' as well. Pretty cool deal.

But, frankly, she deserves it. She's an awesome kid. I imagine that she's a ticking adolescent bomb, and that she will go off in the not-too-distant future, but for now I'm basking in how much fun she is, and how easy she is, and how smart she is, and how mature she is. Now I'm basking in the fact that everyone in New York who spent time with her just raved about her. Now I'm basking in the fact that one of my mom's friends was so impressed with her that she wrote me a letter, just to tell me so. I'm planning on pulling out that letter and reading it over and over and over in about three or four years, while I wait up to see just how far over curfew she plans to stay out on a weekday.


(above: Em at 1)

Ten years. A decade. A decade of motherhood. A decade of being a family. A decade of Em.

It seems like yesterday.