Run and hide! It's a MOMMY BLOG!

This one is, seriously, an obnoxious "my kid is so great" post. So here's your fair warning to click away.

My 9-year-old daughter is working on an autobiography at school and the parents were asked to contribute one page about their daughters. No problem for a writer, right? I should have just been able to bang it out. But no. This one took a long while to finish. Where to start? How much humility to include? Should I gush and brag?

Since she would be reading, I decided to NOT include any little endearing negative qualities that would sound normal and less uber child. 'Cause she's like me. It can be 99% fantastic with one little slightly-bad comment and that would become the main focus.

So it's pretty much one big brag, but if you want to read it, here you go:

Naomi is a girl who loves to run. “Can I go?” she’ll ask me at the corner of our block. Then she tears off like a bullet down the sidewalk, backpack swinging, until I catch up at the door. She loves to swim and be in the ocean, whether she’s surfing, snorkeling, waterskiing, or kayaking. She sees waves that terrify me with their crash and spray as an invitation. She climbs to the highest branch that will hold her in our tall cedar tree. She shimmies up the rope swing, so high my heart to jolts with fear before she makes her way back down. She likes to saber fence and beat all the boys in her class, then smile and shake their hands.

Naomi is a girl who loves to read. She can spend all afternoon draped over the chair in her room, absorbed in adventure books. “Let’s go,” I’ll say, “You’ll be late to school,” but she doesn’t hear me because in her mind, she’s hanging out with Meg and Charles Wallace, or some cats from the Warriors. She loves learning about animals, especially sharks and whales, and then she draws them. It upsets her that they are disappearing from our oceans.

Naomi hates to be tickled, but loves to be hugged. She likes watching movies with our whole family squashed together on the couch on a rainy afternoon. She loves playing make-believe games with her sister. She doesn’t care much about what she wears. Naomi likes her long hair, but it doesn’t have to be “just so,” and most of the time, it isn’t. When a hairdresser once fluffed and curled it all around her head, she stared incredulously in the mirror, but managed a small “Thank you.”

But what makes me the proudest of all is that Naomi is a girl who is kind. She’ll be anyone’s friend as long as they are nice in return. She’s quick to forgive and loyal to her friends. When a girl at pony camp teased her little sister, Charlotte, Naomi demanded an apology, and got one. She feels it’s terribly unfair that so many people in the world are suffering, and wants to help whenever she can.

She’s a good kid, and I love her.

I'll write one for my younger one as well. Even if she doesn't get the same assignment, it would be nice to keep in her baby book.

Tell me about someone special to you.