K turned 9 years old yesterday. 9 years old! And she's starting freakin' 4th grade today. Quick, get me my walker.

I felt it even more so when J turned 16 this passed summer. Wasn't I just 16? I was her nanny, for crying out loud. I watched The Little Mermaid with her every day of the summer of 1992. Every damn day! We had a regular morning lineup, too. Sesame Street and Barney on channel 13-PBS, followed by old 21 Jumpstreet and Batman (with Adam West and Burt Ward) reruns on channel 11 before it became the WB. The Little Mermaid was saved for later in the day after lunch and a dip in the pool. How is she suddenly ready to drive? And she's taken college courses, too. That kid's gonna have more credits by the end of high school than I have now.

But I digress. We had a little party for K last night, complete with pizza, presents, and Italian cake (oh-so-good). The kid got a shload of new clothes for school (most August and September kids would bitch about getting clothes for their birthdays but K looked like she was about to go into fashion overload), an entirely new bedroom revamped by her mom this weekend while she was at her grandmother's house (surprise!) and a ticket to go to Florida with my Mom. The elation on her face-- I wish I could bottle it and drink it myself. I think I would live forever if I could do that.

Her bedroom is absolutely gorgeous. This isn't the first time my sister has redone the room as a surprise for K, but the last time, the room was a bit extreme. She had painted the walls hot pink. Yeah, hot pink walls in a 9X10 room. My claustrophobia always got to me whenever I went in there. And she had painted sections of the white bedroom set hot pink and bright purple. Pink and purple paint over a white lacquered dresser-- it was not too pretty. I think the paint could have been scratched off with a fingernail. K was 4 though, and she thought it was just so cool.

I think the pink finally started to get to her because when my sister started to redecorate the rest of the house, she asked if she could do her room, as well. M told her eventually, but that she was busy at the moment. K accepted that and waited for the day when her mom would not be so busy. Little did she know that M had a plan all along.

She had told me she was going to paint the room blue and green with a chair rail to separate the two colors. As long as the colors weren't too dark, I thought that would look very nice. Then as the neighbors were moving out last week, they mentioned that they had some wainscoting lying around that they didn't need and if anybody wanted it, they could have it. M grabbed that stuff as fast as she could and got to work. All Saturday and Sunday, M cleared the room out, put up the wainscoting, painted, stenciled, moved the furniture back in, hung new curtains and mini-blinds, put new bedding on, and even fixed the closet door that had been broken for the passed 6 years. She ended up painting the top portion of the wall light blue and the wainscoting white. The place looks like a room in a doll house, complete with patchwork quilt at the end of the bed.

Needless to say, the kid was floored by it.

When I got home from work last night and went upstairs, she immediately showed me her room. She showed me every new thing that had been done to it one at a time. At the end of the evening, she said that it was definitely the best present she got this year.

That kid is really something. I like her; I think I'll keep her.