My baby is eight today... 

Mae shares her birthday with: Author Maya Angelou who turns 80 today and is partying with Oprah Winfrey. Maya Angelou was a single mother at age 17.

What I’m baking at this very moment to wake Mae up with, singing: blueberry muffins.

What she read last night: Ivy and Bean.

A poem that Mae wrote for me recently: “You are a warm cup of coffee just made, you are a burrito with a lot of hot sauce.”

How I know that she is developing just right: Because I borrowed Your Eight-Year-Old: Lively and Outgoing from another mom, and author Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D, says that your eight-year-old “cannot get enough of her mother’s attention.”

The greatest irony of the day: Mae’s birthday wish today is to go and see the just-released (April 4!) movie Nim’s Island in which her fav actress Abigal Breslin “is left to fend for herself after her scientist father’s boat leaves him stranded far away.”

Please tell me: Do you also get emotional on your child’s birthday, too? Maybe it’s because I’m a Cancer. Jeesh, someone pass the tissues–  Happy Birthday to my Sweet Mae Mae! I love you!