My daughter turned eight last weekend, and I’m feeling a bit like a crone. All those old ladies who stopped me on the street eight years ago — the ones who said “treasure these days because they go so fast” and the ones I wanted to take by their fragile shoulders and shake while I screamed “I can’t sleep! How can I treasure these days when I can’t sleep. I know there’s spit up somewhere because I can smell it, but I can’t find it. How can I treasure that?!?” — they were right. Whew, those years went fast. And slow. And kinda fast.

On the upside (and Min and I tried valiantly to concentrate on the upside while we lay in bed on the eve of her birthday, wondering if we’d stored up enough moments of youngster-hood), there are so many things we can do together now. Such as, talk books. We’re now reading from the same shelves at Kidsbooks. Most recently, she’s passed along The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, which I’ve always wanted to read.

I am going to miss those Elephant and Piggie books, though. The spit-up, not so much.