8th birthday celebration, originally uploaded by mizzjenny.

Last week, my youngest turned eight.

The night before, my mom, my sister and I took my two girls to the San Francisco Ballet to see the Nutcracker. We got home around 11 pm, so the early morning gift bonanza was a little bleary-eyed.

We gave her a cotton candy maker. I'll pause for a minute to allow you to absorb the intelligence of that decision.

We might as well have given her rocket fuel. It would probably be less messy, that's for sure. Heh.

Anyway, she insisted on wearing her party dress to school, so I posed her in front of the tree before we ran out the door.

My littlest kid is no longer a little-little kid. She's still petite, wearing a whopping 6x and a size 12 shoe. But her mind works a mile a minute, and she's a hilarious, if occasionally unpredictable, conversational partner.

She just plopped down next to me on the couch, and when I asked her to share something that cracks her up, she rolled her eyes and did her secret little grin, the one that lights up her face and makes her eyes twinkle.

"What?" I asked. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," she giggled.

And you know, I don't really need to know, because I'm giggling, too.