i may not make it through the night

it is only 9:30. the girl is having a sleepover tonight (her 12th birthday is tomorrow). the hubs and the boy escaped to a hotel for guy's night. the girl has two friends spending the night.

do you know how squeally tween girls can be? it is like that high pitched noise right before only dogs can hear something. they have had junk food. they have had soda. they are hyper. they are chasing each other around the house, wearing blankets like capes. they remind me of the boy when he was a toddler. but the boy never squealed this high pitched squeal.

my heart just thudded. they're in the girl's room. i can hear bits of their conversations. the girl is in the middle of these other girls. and by that i mean one of the girls is more popular and seems "older." she has one of the phones the girl covets--some flip keyboard phone or something, i really have no idea, only that it is "way cool and you can type on it like a keyboard" and the girl really wants one.

the other girl walked in and said, "wow, your house is twice the size of mine" and she doesn't have a cell phone and she shares a room w/ her little sister.

the "cool" girl looked in the girl's closet and asked if that was all the clothes she has. admittedly the girl doesn't hang up a lot of her clothes, she stuffs them in the drawer. the girl said her other clothes were in the laundry.

they are now sitting at the kitchen table making bracelets and origami boxes. there are beads all over the kitchen floor.

oh lord, now they are singing. country music. country? wtf? shit, that song is going to be stuck in my head all day tomorrow. our song by taylor swift. twang much?

the hubs and the boy went out for chinese for dinner and are no doubt eating junk food and watching iron man in a hotel room right about now.

tomorrow we'll have the family over for cake and ice cream and celebrate.

i still can't believe she'll be 12. this time 12 years ago i'd been in labor for two days. right about now i was in hard labor and wondering if she'd ever come out. around midnight the dumb ass doctor would finally decide to do an emergency c-section after letting me push and push w/ no results. and then, at 1:17 am, jan. 17 the baby i feared i'd never have, the baby i dreamed i was pregnant w/ before i even knew i was pregnant, my sweet baby heidi was born.

she is so incredible. for all that we've gone through this week, she's just amazing. she's loving and sensitive and beautiful and tender and intelligent beyond her years and curious; sassy and sarcastic and funny. she's so like me in many ways and so like the hubs in many ways. i love the freckle on her left ear and the faint scar above her right eye and the birthmark and scar on her butt and the way she's sprouting up so fast that she'll be taller than me in a few years. i love the way she sings with all of her heart when she really can't carry a tune in a bucket. i love that she knits w/ pencils and still loves to color and cuddle and play w/ her cat.

i want to shield her from everything and anything that might hurt her, whether real or imagined. i want her to feel confident in herself and be proud and not worry about what other people think or do. hard to instill that in someone else when you can't always manage it yourself.

i think back to the baby and toddler years and how hard i thought it was then. well, not hard exactly, but a different kind of hard. it's a lot of sleeplessness and demanding in that you don't get more than five minutes to yourself for so many years and there is no reasoning with them and the protectiveness you feel then is because they're so physically vulnerable. now it is hard because even though i love seeing her stretch her wings and assert her individuality she's more emotionally vulnerable. and those hurts, those aches, can't be kissed away and made to feel better w/ a band aid.