Ten things on my birthday

1. I love birthdays so, so much. I love my birthday, your birthday, her birthday. I've been ridiculed a fair amount in my thirty-five years about my love of celebrating, but no matter, it won't stop me. Birthdays are renewing, as are the celebrations that can come from them. Feeling blue? Bake a cake for someone who is an entire year older now! Turning a year older yourself? Turn to your friends for some old-fashioned self-indulgence. Eat a good meal and reminisce about your silly youth. Or your silly last year. You won't regret it.

2. Yesterday I spent eleven dollars on pink sparkly nail polish for me, Alyce and Shira to wear on my birthday. Nothing says birthday quite like pink sparkles.

3. I have come to understand that mistakes are good. You can't make mistakes unless you are acting in the world, moving forward.

4. My preference for birthday cake is chocolate with butter cream icing. I don't really enjoy fondant. But I'll enjoy pies, brownies, ice cream sundays, and any and all cookies if chocolate cake is unavailable because this is just the kind of person I am. I also only want to indulge in these things if you'll share them with me.

5. I have watched two babies enter the world this year. I always knew my calling, but now I really know. Those mistakes I've made in my life? This is most certainly not one of them.

6. I'm braver than I think.

7. As a parent birthdays are less about yourself and more about watching your children rip open the presents they wrapped themselves the night before in Tinkerbell wrapping paper. Birthdays also now include no less than six cards, most of which have Snow White on them. I couldn't love them more.

8. Turning thirty-five doesn't make me old. But what it does make me is a person with wrinkles around my eyes. I've always thought smiling eye wrinkles a beautiful part of a person's face, but at the same time it never quite occurred to me that I, too, would smile my way into a face full of them. But I've certainly earned them, what with all the smiling I've done in my life, and I couldn't be luckier.

9. One year for my birthday I would like to host an enormous dinner where I would cook for all of my favourite people. I would celebrate another year by saying thank you to the people I love the most. Doesn't that sound lovely? I think that's how I'll celebrate turning forty. Save the date.

10. I'm still on-call for a good friend waiting to give birth to her first child. If she's wondering what to do for my birthday, a baby would do nicely. I would be honoured to share my birthday.