My Christmas Baby
Cue the oohing: my daughter turns five on Christmas Eve. Yes, she was the very best Christmas gift ever. Yes, it is very sweet.
But let's be honest, having a Christmas birthday is not the best. Her birthday always gets overshadowed by the holidays, her friends aren't around to celebrate and she doesn't get very many gifts -- and we are Jewish. I'm with Scary Mommy who is campaigning to have March be named national abstinence month so that no other kids have to suffer the indignities of a Christmas birthday (and she's Jewish too).
Not that my little girl lets herself be overshadowed.
She is just too much. Too much spark and determination and love; too much beauty and wit and expression. I can't think of a day where she hasn't made me smile from the heart. I can't think of a day when I haven't shaken my head with the too-muchness of her.
She is the youngest in her class and in our family but that doesn't stop her. My guess is she is fairly typical of a girl with two older brothers: she is rough and tumble, loves to fart and is girly when need be. Her brothers hate each other and love her. She is going to be living proof of the result of unadulterated adoration. And I think one of my biggest parenting challenges will be making sure she doesn't turn into a brat.
I don't want to get too maudlin on you. She is turning five which means I am closer to saying goodbye to constant hand holding and big open mouth kisses, to mispronounced words and innocently hilarious explanations of the world. (I didn't know that snow was clouds that exploded when a bird hit them, until she told me.) Five is the end of babydom and the start of big kid-ness with all it's required coolness. My last baby is turning five and yet, it feels like a moment ago she was a baby.
When she was three months old I was walking with her in the front carrier when a stately, elderly woman started talking to me. She told me she was a well-known pediatrician and then she said: "that girl is going to change the world."
I believe it. It's a burden but it's what we expect from someone born on Christmas Eve isn't it?
Want more? Last year I was writing about whether Thomas the Train is sexist.
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