My baby's 5 years old today.

And the things I want to remember about her is how she picks up little snippets of sayings from tv or friends, and then trots them out in other contexts to make people laugh.

She does it on purpose.

Her whole way of dealing with the world, either when playing with friends or diffusing an angry mommy, is to be funny. I'm afraid she's going to be kind of a class clown.

And she's still got that gemini thing going; she was the only girl invited to a "boys night" playdate recently because when the mommy reminded her son that girl2 couldn't come, the son replied "oh, girl2 is okay."

And yet she loves to dress up in Princess dresses and do tea parties. That's the birthday she's having today; a tea party birthday with all girls (she was adamant about all girls).

I think she's realizing now some of the boy/girl differences. I've seen her parrot older girls' talk about "this boy likes me" or "such-and-such is my boyfriend", but it's only recently on the playground that I've seen her start to act in those social ways girls act sometimes to define themselves as "girl" and to look down on the boys as "other."

Girl2 is a snuggle bunny, she still wants to be touching people all the time, and she's happiest sitting on someone or very close to them.

Girl2 is a leader in her ballet class, she's the loudest at Kohitsuji when they present a song, and she can play two-handed piano.

She also has warts, delights in doing actions that drive girl1 crazy, and takes TEN MILLION YEARS to do something simple like put on her clothes in the morning.

She asked for crepes with chocolate for breakfast and pizza for dinner tonight. But she still eats broccoli or asparagus or carrots at the drop of a hat (as long as there's ranch dressing).

I love her very much and I can't wait to see what the next year will bring.

Happy Birthday, Girl2.