No, not this one. (If you're looking for the 13 Days of Doctor Who Bloghop schedule, click here.)
This one:
My oldest girl is eleven. Eleven! This is what she looks like most days:
The running joke is that she is my mini-me. We look alike, we talk alike, we love the same sorts of books. But happily, she is her own person as well: a far better artist and musician than me, much more diligent about homework than I EVER was, and generally delightful. I know that people say the teen years are tough (the number of people who offer me condolences on the prospect of fourteen straight years of at least one teenaged girl in the house is legion) but I have to say, watching her come into her own and become this interesting, funny, intelligent, hardworking, mischevious person gets better each day.
Happy birthday, sweetheart.
PS: Every year on my daughter's birthday, I read this essay by the incomparable Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (AKA The Yarn Harlot). This section in particular resonates with me:
North America wants children (especially little girls) to be polite. Obedient. Pliable. Kids who fight back and say no and think for themselves are hard to raise and not thought well of at all. We all talk about how "good" an obedient child is, and it struck me at some point while I was raising you, that I couldn't have a child who did as they were told really well, and then suddenly expect you to turn into an adult who was assertive, independent and free thinking. I realized you couldn't tell a kid "do what I tell you" and then turn around when they became a grown-up and suddenly say "think for yourself".
The entire essay is wonderful -- whether you're raising a daughter or a son, it is such a wise and loving long view of parenting. She's the kind of mum I aspire to be.
