The Terrible Teens . . .

. . . have officially begun.  That's right, my "baby" turned Thirteen Years Old today!  How did that happen?  Wasn't it just last week that I was still nursing her and changing her diapers?  How is it that she can just grow up like this on me?  Why didn't she stay a baby forever?  Or at least until I was ready for her to grow up?  It's so not fair!  Waaaaaaaah!

By all accounts, she's a pretty good kid.  She doesn't smoke, drink, do drugs, go out with boys, and she's not sexually active.  She has the usual "teenage angst," but handles it fairly well for the most part.  Okay, she isn't as personally responsible as I would like for her to be.  She doesn't keep her room as tidy as I would like, and her school papers are always just tossed in her backpack.  But she can generally be trusted to spend an evening in the house by herself without burning it down and she can make a darn good grilled-cheese sandwich.  She is learning to take better care of her pets and is discovering how hard it is to take care of another life form (aka "furry children").  She could be much *much* worse.

For her birthday, she asked for several high-tech gadgets.  Unbeknownst to her, I actually did get her an iPod while we were in the US for vacation this summer and have kept it hidden until today.  She was overjoyed to finally get one and it's super-special because it's a model that is not yet available in Turkiye.  The funny thing is that we had been out at the shopping mall earlier today looking for some new jeans, and she gravitated towards the Barbie dolls in the children's section of Boyner.  And then she insisted on a Happy Meal at McDonald's for dinner because she wanted the toy!  I'm not sure what's going on here--whether I have half-a-grown-up or half-a-child.  Maybe both.