This girl turned seven today. I’m not sure how it is possible, but it is. Once she was one, and now she is seven, and I don’t know how we got from there to here or how we will get from here to the next there, and so on, and so forth. Every parent goes through this, and yet it still seems such a mystery, and such a unique one at that. Surely I am the first and only human being to grapple with the impenetrable mystery of time. Surely this emotional experience is unique to me.

And yet I know that this isn’t true. I know that this just is, and that it is as common and inevitable as the sun rising.

(And I love it, I do, but still. Where did that other Emilia go? Whatever happened to that baby, that tiny girl?)

(But still.)