Xiana's birthday

I don't know what it is about Xiana's birthday... it gets me every year.  I always swore I wouldn't be one of those moms who gush over every year, like it's such a sentimental and emotional thing.  I mean... everybody gets a year older every year... everybody... big deal.  Except...... that is is such a very very big, gigantic, earth shattering, show stopping deal... every year.  How can this be? I ask myself every October.  How can I be that mom? How did this happen?  When I was in Walmart buying a 5 candle I almost cried.  Seriously, I stood there in the baking aisle wiping away tears thinking, I am that mom! My own birthday has never had such a profound effect on me.  I've never thought it impossible that I could be 30 or another year older.  It's never struck me as odd or poignant or anything special that I reached any milestone.  But my baby girl?  My baby girl is 5 and I can hardly believe it.  I can't help but wonder if her life is everything I hoped it would be.  Has she done everything a 5-year-old should have done by now?  Has she had a joyful life?  Will she look back on these years as idyllic? I hope so.  Every year, on the eve of her birth, all I can think is how dramatically she rocked my world the day she was born.  How she changed everything about me to the very core of my being.  How I will never ever be the same.  How I could never be the person that I am without her being the person that she is; the person that agreed to join me in this life; that wanted me, that mom, as her mother.  I marvel about it.  I can't get over it.  Every. single. year. I can't believe she's mine.  She's growing.  She's learning.  She's better, smarter, more beautiful, more wonderful, more special than I could have every dreamed.  She's so much more than me.  But she still picked me. 

I made her a balloon wall which sufficiently surprised her despite Kolton's persistent cries of, "bayooon, bayoon, bayooon" from outside her door.  We made cupcakes galore, when to lunch with mom, went to the pumpkin patch, painted shirts with puffy paint, and then Brian and I took her out... just her.  It might be the first time since Kolton was born she's had both of us all to herself.  She requested sushi which made both of us happy.  So we went to sushi where the chef made her a delightful little flower out of strawberry, and then we went to see Hotel Transylvania.  It was perfect... almost as perfect as my little five-year-old girl.