You Say It's Your Birthday? Well It's My Birthday, Too!

Worst.

Birthday.

Ever.

I don’t know why, but this one is killing me. I’ve been in serious mental anguish for the last week and a half. I feel old. I feel powerless. I feel like it’s over before it even started. I should probably see somebody. Or I could close the curtains and take to my bed.

But I won’t.

Because I’m the mom and they need me and no one would understand anyway because it’s not my birthday.

It’s the Big Girl. She turned ten and I am already so over this “growing up” thing. In fact, I was over it the day before it even happened.

When she was still nine and 364ths.

I swear to you – and I am not even exaggerating – that just yesterday she was urping strained carrots and wriggling baby poo out the side of her diaper into the toes of her footie pajamas.

Yesterday.

And you might think to yourself, “Urp and poo? Get over it!”

But I can’t. Because that urp came out of the cutest little chubby cheeks and that poo got stuck between the tiniest little pink toes.

And now she closes the bathroom door to poo (who knew that would be the beginning of the end?) and the only time I see the toes is when she asks me if she can have a pedicure.

What?!

You’re ten. You can have a pedicure when you can pay for it and drive yourself to the salon. Which, based on the “Parenting Time Warp” that I just recently discovered, should be possible sometime the end of next week.

That is, if my “Time Warp” math is correct.

Basically, I only have about a minute before she packs up and heads off to college. One more minute to turn her into a responsible and respectful adult.

Crap.

Thankfully – despite my best efforts to the contrary – she is already a pretty great kid. A really great kid. She’s kind and funny and she tries really hard to always do her best work. Yet, not a day goes by that I don’t wonder at the stupidity (thinly disguised as parenting) that comes out of my mouth. But, in my defense, I really thought I had more time to fix the mistakes that I’ve made.

Then she went and turned ten, which is way more than halfway to “I’m outta here”.

Plus, I found out that all of those obnoxious people who stop new parents in the grocery store to say things like, “enjoy this time with them” and “they grow up so fast” were on to something. As if I could hear anything they had to say through the fog of sleeplessness and stink.

As if.

And now it’s too late to listen to all of those folks who actually knew what they were talking about because the girl is already ten!

Ten.

I’m going to go hug her before she moves out…