Trying to Stop being Clever

My daughter is amazing. When people compliment her to me I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react. Yes, she’s of my genes, and I’m partly responsible for her beauty, not with anything I’ve done, but even so, when someone says, “You have beautiful eyes” it’s not because you’ve worked hard to sculpt the eyes you have (typically), but still you say, “Thank you.” And yes, Delilah has my eyes. And they are beautiful. But if they say she has beautiful eyes, is it appropriate for me to say “thank you”? It seems like it, but then I don’t deserve credit for my own eyes let alone hers. People say she’s so smart, and she is, but can I take credit for that? If they say she’s very well behaved, it seems even more awkward to say “thank you” for that, but in fact it’s more appropriate because her behavior is one thing I do have something to do with. More often than “thank you” though, I find myself responding to “she’s so smart, she’s so beautiful, she’s so sweet, so well-spoken” with, “Yes s

Great things happening at home. Delilah is getting so big, so grown up. I’m starting to feel it. Starting to get sad about the loss of innocence. She hasn’t lost that much of it, but the little bits are starting to hit home. She’s recently started saying that she doesn’t love Woody anymore. Seems innocuous enough, but let me put some perspective on it. When she was really little, like a year old, she would sit and watch, completely absorbed, any of the Toy Story movies. Woody was her favorite. Then, after seeing Toy Story 2 about 7 million times, she really took to Jessie. But she still loved Woody, the ol’ Woodster. So nowadays she’s saying “I don’t love Woody. I love Jessie and Buzz.” That’s fine, of course. It’s up to her to decide who and what she loves (we’ve even had to accept and not punish her for saying, “I don’t love Great Gramma!” because we can’t change that), but it makes me sad, and reminds me of the birthday I had over 30 years ago when my brother gave