This time nine years ago, I was sitting at a nearby restaurant with my husband and mother-in-law, fully aware (but so very unaware) that I was heading to the hospital to have my first child at the crack of dawn on 11/20/2000. She was completely upside down, despite attempts at an external cephalic version (for those who arrive here after googling that phrase: unless you have an epidural and plan to have a baby right then, they rarely work for first babies, I think) and huge because of what I believe to be undiagnosed gestational diabetes (diagnosed with it for the second pregnancy–I think I somehow cheated the test the first time).

I didn’t sleep well.

She wasn’t born until after 10 a.m.

She was perfect, except for froggy legs and knees or double jointed hips that kept her knees up by her shoulders when she wasn’t swaddled.

She has been nearly perfect every single day since then.

Tomorrow, my very wonderful girl, the same one who danced in a ballet on her eighth birthday (and who dined, afterwards, at the same restaurant we sat at the night before she was born), is heading to Atlanta with her Daddy-Dad. Saturday, they’re going to New York for two nights, to experience a world of excitement and wonder the likes of which she’s never known.

She’s a reader, a drawer, a ballerina, no longer a competitive horseback rider. She’s the rarest of souls and my favorite kind of person in the world (really–I have written about it before here). She is the kind of person who just IS. She doesn’t bring any problems to the table and she just likes to be and to do and to go. I told another mother that I am jealous of that personality (her son is the same way–he brought her a gift of beads and old string from a Paris flea market this past spring). Then I took a minute to think and said, instead, that perhaps it’s better to be the parent to that child! Life is easy for the parent of an easy child.

I have never visited NYC. My husband has, but not for years and years. I am just provincial enough to worry about their trip, but the worry is subsiding. Last week, I couldn’t sleep because of it. Tonight, I’m just cooking the requested Birthday Meal (homemade mac and cheese–reference Ina’s Grownup Mac and Cheese recipe–I’ll put it here for you with my changes soon) and providing a few wrapped gifts and some divine cupcakes (choc with choc buttercream, of course).

I forget that I am a genuine adult a whole lot of the time. In fact, during a serious emergency last year where I was the go to adult, the first things I said were, “I need an ambulance and I need a real adult.” I forget that I am old enough to have my name on a mortgage and to have a Nine Year Old Daughter. God bless her.