Happy Birthday, Bug!

My baby turned nine today. This is alarming on several fronts:

a. I really can't keep calling this "baby weight" when the baby is close to a decade old.
b. Before I know it, I'm going to have TWO hormonal, moody girls.
c. Nine? Really? Wasn't she just four?
d. I think this means that I, too, am getting older. I don't believe I want to think about that right now.

Her daddy and I woke her up by singing to her, let her open a few of her presents at breakfast, and then whisked her off to school with a tray of pink icing-flowered cupcakes to share with her class. I just finished strewing pink crepe paper around the house, which looks a little less like the festive vision I had in my mind when I started and a little more like there was an industrial accident involving Pepto Bismol.