my favorite girl...

my neice m just turned 8 years old yesterday. 8 years old! time really does fly, man. most of you don't know this, but i witnessed the birth of my niece first hand. my sister was in chicago when she was born a month prematurely so neither my mom nor my sister's (now ex) husband made it from dhaka to chicago in time to be there for the impromptu celebration. it was just me and my sis hours before the delivery and i was scared as fuck.

so as a result of actually being there to witness this precious event, i feel exceptionally close to her. she's extra special to me. it saddens me on occasion that i really wasn't there for the majority of her childhood what with my family living in bangladesh and me being here, but thankfully i do get to see her at least once a year.

but i really can't believe that she's eight years old. i mean, i have a t-shirt of hers that she wore when she was only a month old and i can pretty much wear it on my hand!

but now that she's older, and has her own little fierce personality, she's all the more fun to talk to and tease and interrogate. so in honor of her birthday i thought i'd blog about her and let you, my readers, in on my favorite girl in the whole world. hmmm... let's see: she doesn't particularly like school, she's quite the girly girl, and she won't admit to me that her favorite color is pink. she likes hello kitty stuff, she watches dora the explorer among other shows, she scowls at the television frustratingly when blue takes forever to find his clues, and she totally digs bob marley (for which she gets extra brownie points and is thereby automatically excused for liking teeny bopper pop music of the 2000's). she eats lots of vegetables, has traveled much of the world at her tender young age, she's three quarters bengali and one quarter french which enables her to be fluent in english, bengali and french, and she absolutely adores her 18 year old half sister (who happens to be 3 quarters french and one quarter bengali) and no doubt wants to be like her. she loves silly slapstick movies like the hot chick from which she'll take any opportunity to recite some corny line or another, like "ling ling, you forgot your bling bling..." followed by incessant fits of laughter. she probably owns about 20 different pairs of shoes (thanks to my sister's fashion uber-consciousness) and loves to play with barbies. thanks to her ultra hip aunt she owns a multicultural group of barbie and ken dolls and continues to hint at me about getting her a barbie townhouse. i don't see that happening anytime soon, but shh! we won't tell her i said that.

during my last trip home we sat together on the couch on a saturday morning and watched tv. i think we were watching scooby doo or dora. but at one point she got up to get something and when she came back she literally sat on my lap, wrapped both her legs around my waist, both arms around my neck and settled her right cheek against my left cheek and proceeded to watch her show. we sat like that for several minutes and it was during that time i thought to myself, damn... there aren't too many people that would show that kind of carefree affection towards me. it was literally one of the most heart warming moments of my life.

so i ran across a birthday card the other day that made me smile at how absolutely on point the message was. it said, "having you as a niece is one my favorite things in life". and it truly is.