That child is just like me

Sweetness, my oldest daughter, is turning out to be a lot like her mother. I first noticed it this week when my parents (who are also our next door neighbors) had a very laborious project...picking rocks out of their newly laid back yard so that grass could be planted. My Sweetness was out there all day helping. She loved being the "helper" and only required copious amounts of praise in return (also just like her mother). I remember how much I loved being my dad's helper. I remember helping him with the house I grew up in. I helped him stack the woodpile at the side of the house. I helped him build the shed out back. I remember how utterly exhausted I felt after helping, but how much I loved being the one that liked to work with dad.

It is Sweetness' birthday next week. Sweetness has already started hounding me about her presents. She has been trying to guess what store her presents might have come from and is constantly coming up with guesses of what those presents might be. I've already had to move the presents twice because she's almost found them. This is exactly what her mother is like! So excited in advance for the coming festivities and bothering everyone else with her endless questions. I find that it is delightfully fun to find ways to throw her off the scent. She figured out that she's getting something from Toys R Us, but it was actually a gift that I picked up on behalf of my parents. The poor child was so disappointed when I assured her that her father and I did not purchase her present from us at that store. HeeHee.

While I happen to love that my child takes after me in those areas, I'm not blessed with the illusion that being "like me" will make her an easy child to raise. I can be a real pain in the butt and I tend to view myself as always being in the right...something I heard that can be hard to deal with in teenagers. Perhaps that makes God laugh. I know my parents must think it is awfully funny. =)