Embracing my smile lines...

Today is my birthday. My thirtieth birthday to be exact.  A milestone in a young chickens life! When I came home from work last night I found a gift under one of my plants in the living room. It was a big birthday bag with Little Birds name scratched out and mine written in. I opened it with her this morning. She gave me a necklace from her dress up box (its cute too, very 80s retro chic) and a sidewalk-chalk book one of my friends gave her for her birthday a few years ago. Her dad was with her last night, and when I came home and saw the gift I asked if he helped her or reminded her. He had nothing to do with it, didn't even talk to her about it. It warms my heart beyond measure that she remembered it was my birthday and that she found and wrapped and set out the present all on her own. So sweet... To counter that sweetness this morning she has been grumpy and whiny because I am not having a birthday party that she is invited to... I feel bad, I am having a late night dance party tonight with my friends, and she will not be there. As much as her pouting was annoying this morning it also warms my heart that she wanted to be in on the celebration! I told her that she and her friend Lou and I would all have a special birthday dinner tomorrow night instead. She didn't buy it, she wants a party! Ha! She IS my daughter! haha! 

The days leading up to this birthday I have felt a little melancholy. Leaving my twenties... These markers in a persons life allow one to look back and reflect. I look back on the last decade and roll my eyes at some things I did... smile and laugh at other things... feel proud about some things... even though a great many of my friends are older than me, and just laugh patronizingly at my "turning 30 depression" it IS a sign of a change, a shift, in life. I know that I will look back on my thirties in a completely different way than I look back on my twenties... I know that this decade holds a completely new set of experiences. The days leading up have been nostalgic. I have also had a lot of sadness thinking about how my aging also ages my parents and my Little Bird. I think about how I am not ready for my parents to be elderly. I am not ready for that Little Bird to stop being so little.. and the last few days I have been mourning that. BUT I woke up this morning feeling excited and invigorated. I look at today and the next ten years as being full of possibilities, full of opportunity! I read a book a few years ago that said you fall down and mess up a lot in your twenties. You keep falling down but a little less in your thirties, and you finally start to get it right at 40, and in your 50s you are golden. I look forward to falling down less, and perhaps falling down more gracefully. I look forward to more birthday mornings with my Little Bird and watching her get older and wiser with each year. I am embracing my smile lines! Happy birthday to me.