Happy 5th Birthday Juliette

Juliette, my special little princess turned five a little while ago and already I'm thinking that she's growing up too fast. I think the most fun about being the parent of a young child is that various stages of the development process are so obvious they might as well come as software version upgrades. For example daughter version 5.0 comes will the ability to be embarrassed. I'm not talking about a sad kind of embarrassed when a child does something wrong. I'm talking more of a shy smile or bashful type of reaction that you can tease them about. The other day I gave Juliette the digital camera and told her to take pictures of whatever she wanted. Some of the pictures were quite good. Picture of mom, picture of dad, picture of Nicholas etc... then came the silly pictures: picture of parent's wedding picture on the wall, picture other wall pictures, picture of wall etc... After a while I took the camera and reviewed the pictures with her on the TV. When I commended her on the pictures of the family she beamed with pride. When I asked her why she was taking silly pictures of the wall or of other pictures she smiled coyly and mumbled "I don't know". This was a reaction I had never seen before but something that is such an obvious leap in her character development that I could spot it like I notice a box of Reese’s pieces lying around the outlaws house. Other noticeable recent character changes are things like when everyone is cleaning she can clean her own room for over an hour without any supervision or encouragement. In fact she claims that organizing the cupboards in the kitchen is her favorite thing to do in the whole world. I wonder how long that will last. Yesterday, Juliette’s teacher told us she was a very special and beautiful little girl. I knew that all ready but it’s nice to hear it from a neutral source once in a while. So far she's still daddy's little girl and if I have anything to do with it she'll stay daddy's little girl forever. Of course it would be easier if she stayed five years old forever. Now if only she could only get through the night without wearing a pull-up.