We had a mini-celebration for Kirsten’s fourth birthday over the weekend and I swear these birthday things are rolling around faster and faster. I can’t believe she’s already 4. Seriously, 4! One moment she was stealing my heart with her squishy baby char siew bao face and now she’s full of 4-year-old radness. Putting together her own outfits (often better than I can), making wisecracks, coming up with harebrained ideas – it’s like she’s got a whole psychedelic mind of her own!

You know what? It’s amazing to have boys (and by golly, I love my boys to bits) but it’s a whole other thing to have a girl.

Even way back before I had kids, I’ve always wanted a girl. And you know how it’s like when you want something really, really badly and finally you get it and you realize that holy smokes, it’s even better than you imagined it to be (which didn’t seem possible because it had maxed out the awesomeness scale in your head but then you’re like *mind blown* and you get a brand new super scale).

It was that way when I had her.

As I inhaled her chubby cheeks, a reel of Gilmore Girls mother-daughter moments started playing in my head and I knew she was everything I ever wanted. We would have girly tea parties together, shop for pretty dresses together, stand in line for Minnie Mouse autographs together, get matchy-matchy mani-pedis together. And one day, we would sit down in a hip cafe, have coffee and talk about cute boys like a couple of giggly teenagers while the boys went out into the woods catch gross insects or build campfires or do whatever it is boys do that involve dirt and muscles.

In short, I guess what I mean to say is that I’m positively in love with my little girl.

Sometimes I’m hanging out with her and I just want to pinch myself because I feel like I’m right smack in the middle of everything I could ever hope for. That these little moments are the ones I’ll spend the rest of my life remembering. And I’d force myself to stop and take it all in – the way she laughed, the way she tucked that stray strand of hair behind her ear only to have it fall right back out again, the way her eyes twinkled when we talked about which princess has the nicest tiara (Ariel, obviously). I didn’t think I’d ever want to be involved in a conversation discussing the merits of twirly things on tiaras but there I was, enjoying every moment of it.

Happy birthday, my sweet, sweet princess. 4 looks stunning on you.