Happy Birthday to Me

All in all, it wasn't a bad place to find myself this morning as I turned 31.

I was woken up by Claire who, for a four year old, is oddly thoughtful. She's been all about my birthday for days, sending out invitations in the mail to an imaginary party that we're going to have tonight (the postman has been good enough to ignore the envelopes with chicken scratch and 1 cent stamps I've been leaving him), wrapping gifts (things she finds her in room that she deems sufficiently manly for me, like a toy lion), and decorating her room. The decorations are... insane. I can't really describe it, except to say that it involves a lot of scotch taping of random things to random things. Still, I'm learning what it means when people say "It's the thought that counts." Because my daughter's thoughtfulness is a great gift.

So there's Claire, waking me up at 6:15, a precious 15 minutes before the alarm was going to go off. But I didn't care. The fact that she was awake before me was a small miracle, since I usually need a bullhorn and a cattle prod just to get her toddler ass out of bed for school. I opened my eyes and she was smiling at me and - and I know this is gross-cute - said, "Daddy, I love you," and I'll be damned if she didn't hug me. It's funny, I think she is already thinking of me as one of her teddy bears. The fact that this teddy bear orders her around, teaches her everything she knows, and provides all the forms of sustenance she needs to survive and can still be thought of as a toy is just a testament to her imagination.

A few minutes later I'm in the kitchen trying to whip up breakfast for her when the gift giving starts. I got the aforementioned lion (wrapped better than I can wrap) and two rectangular cuts of construction paper that I was told were ice skates. Then she brought me two poles that were part of some pony toys she got in Disney World and said they were for the skates. "Oh," I said, "they're skis!" "Yeah," she said, "try them!" So there I am, in my boxers, half-awake ape man, making swishing sounds and scooting my feet over two pieces of construction paper on my kitchen floor. She loved it. Like I said, not a bad place to find myself as I turned 31.