One more trip around her sun

Birthday season happens in some furious bursts around here.  Fresh on the heels of reckoning with the Elder's age change, we have another one today with the Younger.  She is every bit a force clothed in the guise of a cuddle bug.  This one is my special little something that is alternately incomprehensible and perfectly predictable.  Sometimes, that's how our days go as well - as if a veritable pendulum swings us one way and then another.  She loves her people fiercely, and I have no idea what her future will look like.  She's a chameleon who doesn't give us any indication where she will establish her groove into her life's journey.  I find that delicious and tantalizing that there will be options a plenty: It's a joy to watch her casually explore her possibilities.  

She is always our last one to ... and that gives me the feels on a day like today.  She's the last one that I will carry across a parking lot.  She's the last one who will let me hold her hand.  She's the last one who I will drop off before school.  She's the last one who will let me read to her.  I'm not one who cares two pennies for many a socially expected sentimental milestone (my children want to skip the rigmarole of a graduation ceremony...good for them!  skip Senior year entirely and graduate early...YES and PLEASE!), but these are my milestones that I care deeply about, ones that are largely found in the solitude of just me and my girl.  My favorite milestones are measured in the distance between our hands, the space between our cheeks, and the span of our arms.  

This is enough.