As I gave Sunny her bedtime hug last night, I told her that it was a little sad to think that this was the last time I would be the mother of a seven year-old.
“Unless you have another baby,” she said.
“The very last time,” I replied, hugging her a little tighter.
“Mom! Can’t! Breathe!” she said, then giggled like a hyena-loon hybrid and kissed my ear.
She was so excited to be almost eight that she couldn’t settle down. “It’s okay, Mommy. I know how to sleep-wiggle!” she said.
I would have called her on it, but she might be right. This kid never walks—she dances and bounces and skips and jumps over all the cracks she can so my back doesn’t get hurt.
She loves superheroes and dogs—the last time we went to the Family Museum, she bought two little dog figurines with Her Own Money and named them Connor and M’gann. When I asked her where she’d found those names, she rolled her eyes and said, “After Superboy and Miss Martian from Young Justice. Duh, Mom.”
Super Sunny has pledged her allegiance to DC, but still cuddles up to watch Agents of SHIELD with me and has Opinions about the Marvel Universe. She thinks Tony Stark is a hoot, but Captain America needs a secret identity.
And that the Hulk needs a hug.
She also loves to read. A few months ago, I found her in the bathroom, standing naked from the waist down with a wad of clean toilet paper in her hand, lost to the world in the open book on the counter. She’d apparently hopped off the commode, glanced at a page, and immediately forgotten where she was in the proceedings.
“She’s yours, all right,” my mother told me, after she stopped laughing.
She’s also a Wesson. Last week, at dinner, she passed more gas, loud and prolonged, than a non-parent would think could be held in a body that small.
“‘Scuse me!” she said, calmly. And then, as her older sister fell off her chair cackling, and the adults around the table tried to gather themselves to explain proper protocol without doing the same, Sunny nodded to herself in satisfaction and said, “I have very good manners.”
It’s no surprise that she was due on April Fool’s Day and then tricked us all into throwing her a birthday party a day early, by doing an unexpected, last-minute somersault in utero.
Come to think of it, that’s probably what she was trying to do last night, as I tucked in my seven year-old, one last time.
Happy birthday, Sunny-girl.
We love you.
Even your sister.
Earful of Cider 