My daughter has recently graduated from the local summer soccer league to this new, year-round, traveling-across-the-state, you’re-in-the-big-leagues-now soccer team. She loves everything about being on this team, from the standard issue sweatshirt with her name embroidered on it, to the more strenuous training that involves a coach telling her she needs to “carb load” before the big tournament (another blog post altogether). But I think what she likes best is how this new soccer team screams I Am A Big Girl Now.

Only she’s still ten. That might qualify her as a Big Girl in seventeenth century Europe. But here, now, today, she’s still getting visited by the tooth fairy and, as far as I’m concerned, that makes her not-so-big.

I don’t know how to convince her that being a big girl isn’t everything it’s cut out to be. Off the top of my head, I can think of ten reasons to love and appreciate her current state of youth:

1. She can go trick-or-treating without getting told, “Aren’t you a little too OLD? And what’s with the Dora costume??”
2. She can collect monkeys and mood rings in relative peace.
3. She can ask our family doctor for a sticker before leaving his office.
4. And wear it proudly on her jacket while waiting for her prescription at the pharmacy.
5. She can wear pig tails every day.
6. And paint her nails electric blue.
7. She can not know the top five elements in the periodic table, who the current Secretary of State is, or what the word irony means, and people won’t think any less of her.
8. She doesn’t need a bra!
9. Or any product with the word FEMININE or HYGIENE in it.
10. She can cry for absolutely no reason at all, and people won’t accuse her of PMSing.

She’s ten. Beautiful, wonderful, not-so-big-yet ten.

Sure, being ten isn’t perfect. It means that household chores are a little more… shall we say… chorey? But that only gets worse the “bigger” one gets. Now that she can reach the top kitchen cabinets without climbing my counters, she’s expected to unload the dishwasher. Now that she can carry a gallon of milk without breaking her back, she’s expected to fix her own drink. That sort of thing.

But little girls get breaks. Little girls get rewards. For example, if she unloads that dishwasher without being reminded? Every single day for a week? That is SO worthy of some ipod downloads. OR… as she’s quite apt to request on occasion… Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes for dinner. Okay, so maybe she’s asking for the pancakes because her coach lovingly requested that she load up on carbs. And heaven knows big girls need to listen to their coaches and load up on their carbs. I guess I don’t care… so long as they’re shaped like Mickey Mouse.