The girl had Mari by a few inches and at least 20 lbs, and she wasn’t afraid to bulldoze my baby whenever the soccer ball came near. I saw her checking my child -- slamming her girth against Mari’s sides, elbowing her, tripping her with her humongous cleats. Mari, in her first season of soccer, was frustrated by it -- couldn’t figure out how to get past this wall of a girl without being hit/pushed/sliced/knocked down. By game’s end, my Mari was near tears. And when the two teams lined up to shake hands and congratulate each other for a game well played, the little/big girl punched my child in the back. Just flat out punched her in the back and walked away!

Now, you should know I’m not afraid of any 9-year-olds. And, with Mari crying in my arms, I made a point of telling the girl and her coach that there wouldn’t be too much more punching going on on that soccer field. I was mad as heck.

And my husband was mad at me.

I don’t know where they get it from, these chocolate little girl pies with their affinity for baby pink fingernail polish and glossy lips and butterfly necklaces and cute shoes. It’s certainly not from their mother. Most afternoons when Mari and Lila tumble off the school bus and up the front stoop giggling, twists flying, pink fingernails slicing through the air, I greet them in shorts and oversized t-shirts, hair barely combed, lips crackling, finger nails chipped and in serious need of a manicurist’s intervention. Some days, Lila pulls out her strawberry lemon lip balm (she calls it her lipstick) and gently pushes it in my face as I lean in for a “welcome home” smooch. Apparently, the 7-year-old’s got a problem with chapped lips.

Whatever. Clearly, getting red-carpet ready for the after school rush of homework, activities, and dinner isn’t really on my radar.

My God, I can’t stand bugs -- never could. I mean, I grew up in Long Island, in a house with a grand, green, immaculately-maintained backyard, and I think I might have gone out there all of, like, three times. By force. There were spiders and mosquitoes and bees and stuff out there. Denene didn’t play that. So I stayed inside with my dolls and my books and far, far away from the creepy crawlies. Those unfortunate buggers that actually made it to the inside? Well, all it took was a full-on, high-pitched “Daddy!” and my father would regulate. We were a team, Daddy and I. I’d scream. He’d kill for me.

I’m not sure how I made it through my single and independent years without my personal bug slayer. It’s all a frenetic, heart-stopping blur. I do know that my Nick took up the Official Bug Killer mantle when we moved in together. For this, I was grateful. But I made a pinky-swear pact with him that when we became parents, I wouldn’t transfer my fear and disgust of my most despised critters -- and there are many! -- to our kids, especially if they were girls.

Lila, Mari, Cole, and Miles (in that order) picking live worms for their
fishing poles.

Now I know why we are only given one birthday per year. Sure, you can argue the logic there can only be one birthday because you are only born once and therefore you can only have one day to celebrate. That is absolutely not the reason we only have one birthday a year. The real reason? Because parents need an entire year to recover from their kids’ birthday parties. For real. Look it up.

My daughter turned eight on April 2nd but through illness after illness after illness (with some swine flu scare thrown in for good measure), we had to postpone her party until this past weekend. Birthday parties where I live are usually a big event. I think it is written in the city by-laws that it has to cost a fortune and be held somewhere fun. You spend hundreds of dollars to show up somewhere with nothing but the birthday girl and some cake and leave with presents and a lighter wallet. But my daughter decided she wanted to have a slumber party. I thought that was a brilliant idea. Both of my boys had sleepover parties when they were around her age. They were easy. They were loud, but easy!

You see with the boys all that I really had to do was put them in the game room with some video games, movies and a pizza. (And occasionally some air freshener to cover over the boy-feet stink.)

Before our daughter was born, it was tradition that my husband and I donned costumes for our annual holiday photo. One year we were Elvis and a Dolly-wanna-be in front of a car with a giant chicken on its roof (we live in Nashville, remember) and another year we dressed up as Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera (I am Latin and moody, remember). For the Frida shoot, I painted on a unibrow and wore a headband of silk roses that I meticulously created with the help of a glue gun and patience.

On Friday, I gave that headband to Maria, who was participating in a Cinco de Mayo event at her school.

Her eyes grew so wide when I pulled it out of its place in storage. "Mama, it is beautiful,'' she said breathlessly.