Another milestone and step out of 'babyhood'.

My baby girl is growing up.

Although we all view her as this delicate little thing with a volatile disease, the reality is, she's a tough cookie. A VERY independent and determined little creature - with far more ability than we knew she had. Health-wise she's been thriving as of late. In all honesty, she's the best she's ever been, and I'm finding that I'm worrying about her and her issues less and less. She's shown so much improvement in EVERY aspect of her life . . . her happiness; her strength; her endurance; school; everything. It's awesome. She also had another major event a couple weeks ago when she pulled out tooth #1; and then a few hours later pulled out tooth #2 (can I just say that she is SO different than her big sister? When Teen was losing teeth, it was a HUGE deal which resulted in us having to hold her down when the snaggle-tooth and gum was all gross and yucky and the other one having to pluck it out - and by 'plucking' I mean just 'barely' touching it - they all fell out with barely an effort, but she was such a putz about those teeth - it was crazy. She didn't want to lose a part of her body. Banshee?! As soon as she knew one of those teeth was even remotely wiggly, she went to town and messed with it SO much that she ended up wiggling the one directly next to it out too).

Several weeks ago, she came home with an invitation to a birthday party. No big deal . . . this happens all the time, right?

WRONG. This was not your ordinary-come-for-a-few-hours kinda party; it was a sleepover party. Meaning ALL night; away from home; away from Mommy and Daddy. That means relying on someone else to take care of my baby. Suddenly every possible 'terrible' scenario played through my head. Yeah, I admit it, I'm over-protective. BUT . . . in my own defense, SHE does come with a lot 'baggage' and there are definitely some very valid concerns. AND . . . I didn't know who the family was at all. My initial reaction was "NO WAY. NO HOW." BUT . . . she was determined. And SO excited about it. How could I let MY issues interfere with what she wants?

As the parent of a teenaged girl, sleepovers are a VERY common occurance - in fact I think it's almost safe to say that teen has averaged at least one sleepover a week for the past 5 years or so, so it's not as though I'm not well versed in the 'sleep-overnese', but she's also much older. And not as 'sickly' as her sister.

My Other Half and I talked about it, and very quickly he sided with Banshee and agreed that she should go. Damn him!! I thought he was supposed to be on the same page of me. I wasn't as convinced as him. I mean, he's a man and all, and he's mostly looking for the 'fun' aspect of it and doesn't consider all the 'minute' stuff; you know, like the fact she has a serious respiratory issue; the fact that she's my baby and I don't want her to grow up (why do Daddies not understand this little aspect?!) and the small fact that we had NO idea who this child is or who her family is. I mean they could be spies or international kidnappers or mass murderers; or they could be vampires and prefer to feast on young children (yeah - no one ever said I didn't have an overactive imagination). SO . . . I put on my CSI hat and went to work trying to track down information. Actually, it wasn't that hard - the mother said that we could reply via Facebook and conveniently listed her name on the invitation. On FB it said that we had 1 mutual friend. Can you guess what I did next? Oh yes I did. I am not ashamed to admit that I went looking for 'references'. AND . . . I got a GLOWING one. One so glowing that I was totally able to put aside MY fears and reservations and went ahead and RSVP'd (even though the 'reference' was a relative of the party thrower - hee hee!).

Anyway, we never looked back. In the days leading up to the party, Banshee got more and more excited. Honestly, in her eyes, this was WAY more exciting than Christmas (and that's HUGE!!). She could hardly stand herself for the excitement. She was up at the butt-crack of dawn EVERY day in the week leading up to the party and was in my room reminding me at that ungodly hour of exactly how many 'sleep nights' remained until the party.

The day arrived and I seriously figured she was going to have a stroke before the start time even arrived. It was a very busy day for us on Saturday, and it aggravated her little being beyond belief that she had to be a little late for the party, but when the time arrived, and I pulled into the driveway to pick her up, she was packed and had all her stuff in her arms waiting for me OUTSIDE the front door. I drove her out; and she quickly ran into the house and disappeared without even a good bye . . . THAT is when I knew that she'd be JUST fine. And she was.

And I was too. The second she walked (ran!) into the house and disappeared with a little group of giggling girls, I knew that she was going to be fine, and that she was in great hands. It absolutely didn't surprise me that she managed just FINE all night.

I picked her up bright and early yesterday morning and she was on top of the world. I don't think ANYTHING could have upset her after that. She chit-chatted a mile a minute on the way to swim lessons about everything they did at the party and all about her grand plans for sleepovers this summer.

My baby girl is definitely growing up (sniff, sniff). She just had her first sleepover; is now asking about residential camp AND . . . is about to finish up Grade ONE!!! YIKES!!! Can we PLEASE slow things down? Just a bit?!