So, What's Worse?

My littel girl, the one I brought home from the hospital all pink and wrinkly, with that New Baby smell is turning 9 (NINE) in 2 short weeks. I am not entirely sure when it happened, but she is not just adding another birthday to her number, she has been turning into a TWEEN. Ya know, not quite a TEENAGER, not quite a little girl, somewhere in between.

It seems like last year, actually I think it WAS last year, that Polly Pockets were a favorite toy. Now, her iPod Nano is never far from reach. She went from me reading stories to her at night, to reading 58 books thus far this school year - ON HER OWN ACCORD - chapter books with the titles of Cheetah Girls 2 and Zack & Cody, to name a few.

She knows every lyric to the High School Musical CD. She begged me to buy her a Tiger Beat magazine at CVS and had it home a a mere day before she had devoured every article and hung every poster from it replacing the Disney Princesses that had hung it their place for years.

She is having her very first sleepover party here next weekend.

She invites nine girls. I fully expected a few no's or at least - "Well, they can come - but ABSOLUTELY NO sleeping over on account I don't know you from Adam and all." Yeah. ALL NINE ARE COMING. All nine are sleeping over. Lucky me.

Miss Thing wanted the girls to bring their American Girl Dolls, watch a movie (we got Hannah Montana), eat pizza, do a craft (We will be making necklaces out of conversation heart beads for the girls and the dolls) and so on. Since, I can never leave well enough alone, I made the invites (on the computer) and decided a theme was appropriate. I made these pillow cases out of 42¢ felt from Walmart. Decided they needed a little pizazz and bought the beaded ribbon, of which I burned my fingers off gluing on with my Industrial Size Glue Gun.







Oh sure, they look cute - but guess what? They were never making it through the post office and we ended up hand delivering them all. The girls are bringing them the night of the party and we are stuffing them so the dolls have nice cozy pillows. For a party favor, I bought cute little bunny slippers for the dolls. No goodie bag crap - thank god.

She is thrilled. More than thrilled. She has GUSHED over me. My talents. My AWESOME MOM ABILITIES. I even heard, "No other Mom would do this for THEIR kid, just YOU Mom." Yes, I did hear it, more than once. I can't say it didn't make the burns all worth it.

So, yes, she's happy. I, on the other hand, can't seem to be this happy about her getting so much older. Consider that the other day, she informed me that the boys in her class were swearing. Yes, she still tells me things - so there is that. I ask what they are saying and she shyly tells me she can't possibly tell me. Okey-dokey. I can stick my head in the sand like anyone else.

About five minutes later she is at my side and whispers, "What's worse to say, FUCKING or FREAKING?"

Huh. I TRIED to control the laughter, I did. I told her both were very bad and not to say them again. I tried to retell the story to DH, at this point, I am crying with laughter. His response? Freaking isn't a swear.