And it's my birthday!

The day, Cleo's fifth birthday, begins early, once again. I'm downstairs in the half-dawn, quietly wrapping her present and checking the baseball scores, when I hear the light percussion of her feet on the floor as she gets out of bed, and then the canter as she totters over to the top of the steps. And even though we're separated by a floor, I can almost see her: naked except for panties, hair disheveled, sleep still in her eyes. Then she speaks:

"Dad! I'm dry and it's my birthday!"

It is, Cleo. You're five. You're your own little girl. You can skip, and hop on one foot, and do toe taps with a soccer ball. You can immerse yourself in a game of monsters and wolves, and then sink equally deeply into a set of Legos. You are not unlike, in some ways, Clara, in The Nutcracker: expectant, curious, excited - and young enough to believe in the native heroism of dolls.

But why tell, when you can show? Here's a message that you wrote me months ago, when you were first thinking about turning five.

And here's the outcome of that message, just before we headed out to school:

You're a good girl, Cleo, and always have been - dry or wet.