Eighth grade girls are some of the most difficult, meanest, most emotional people on the planet. Throughout the year she dealt with bullying, shunning, gossip and lost friendships. She fought back and faced some punishments; lessons that are hard to learn, but valuable nonetheless.

Throughout it all this girl kept her spirits up. She made the best of her situation and didn’t succomb to the pressure, or lose her temper over it, often. Her grades were spectacular throughout and she stayed engaged with basketball, volleyball, chorus and drama.

I don’t know that I would have handled myself as well at her age. She’s an amazing kid; I admire her confidence, her spirit and her persistence.

At the eighth grade graduation, a fellow mother who knew about all the drama among the girls in this year’s class referenced the fact that it had been a tough year, in particular, for my daughter. Even though I swore I wouldn’t cry, my eyes welled up at that, thinking about the months of lunches my daughter ate at a table alone, rather than interact with people who would get her into trouble. Mostly, I’m glad it’s over and we can all move on to the next stage.

Anyway. The girl has a boyfriend and said boyfriend has been far away at a camp for WEEKS. The camp has no internet. No cell phones. No phones. No fax machines (what’s that?) or other forms of communication that periodically require electricity.

She has been getting letters. Handwritten, in an envelope with an address and a stamp, arriving in the mailbox, letters.

It’s adorable.

Not only is she getting letters, she’s WRITING them. I honestly can’t think of any other scenario that would make this kid (or any other kid of this generation) hand write letters and mail them.

I hope that these letters and the memories of the anticipation and the summer of writing stay with her for a lifetime.

This year, in seventh grade, the curriculum is getting a bit more detailed. Last night, after dinner, she was giving her dad and me a rundown of what she’s learning. Words and phrases came out of her mouth that simultaneously made me want to either laugh or clap my hands over my ears and sing “Do Wah Diddy” at the top of my lungs.

I kept telling her how, in my repressed parochial school upbringing we NEVER learned the stuff she’s learning and frankly, I think it’s great that she knows what she does from an appropriate source. My generation, you know, the one that hit puberty the same time that AIDS was sweeping the nation, is a throwback to a bit more squeamish time. It’s refreshing to me, that our daughter is comfortable enough to tell us what she’s learning, without embarrassment and with a little bit of delight, I think as we turn to her with our mildly shocked expressions.

Dear Lord, please let our daughter continue to tell us everything, even when it makes our ears bleed. Amen.

It’s been about eight years since our last family photo, so we’re planning over the holidays to gather together for a portrait session with my husband’s parents. The last time we had this done we all wore the same color shirt, something recommended to us by the photographer. We all thought the result was good, and so we’ve planned to do it again.

Over an hour or so, my MIL and I pored over the Lands’ End catalog (it must be Lands’ End — they make talls and offer the same colors in both men’s and women’s shirts) and settled on pine (a dark green) as our color. The pine shirts come in several styles, so each person can have the style shirt they want.

WELL IT”S NOT THAT SIMPLE.

The girl threw a holy fit over the color. She’s digging in. She prefers the “rich red” and has also suggested we either wear all white or all black. I’m philosophically fine with any of these four colors, but really, getting six people to agree on a single color for a family photo is stressing me out.

I’ve threatened several times to call Grandma and let her be the final decision maker on this issue. The girl has offered to not appear in the photos at all.

What would you do?

A. Order the pine shirts and just let the chips fall where they may.

B. Go ahead and do the photos in the pine shirts without the girl. She’ll regret it when she’s 30.

C. Call Grandma and negotiate another girl-approved color (despite the fact that other family members won’t be OK with those colors).

D. Say “screw it” and let everyone wear whatever the heck they want.

E. Let the girl wear the color of her choice while everyone else wears pine.

I’m counting on you guys. I’m ready to tear my hair out. And that wouldn’t make for a very good family photo. While you’re pondering my conundrum, take a look at these for a laugh: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

She lives a short walking distance from the school.

She’s never without someone with a cell phone.

She has an iTouch and can text her friends with it.

She’s never anywhere but school, home or friends’ homes.

So we’ve held out a pretty long time as you can imagine. She’s indignant and furious. She’s humiliated. We’ve stuck to our guns. We know, once she gets one, that’s it — she’ll be on it 24/7.  We held out getting one for her older brother until he was in high school and marching band practice would end at various times. It became a necessity. We haven’t gotten there yet, with her.

I’m starting to waver, though. It’s that “only kid without one” thing that’s getting to me. It’s the Jonas-like boy asking for her cell number and the girl being forced to lie and say her parents are Amish.

Think we’ll make it to eighth grade?

But that’s not what I’m blogging about (you don’t need to be another in a long list of people hearing me whine). Today, the girl was home while I worked and she, recognizing that I’m barely coming up for air these days, surprised me by making me a very nice lunch and delivering it to my desk.

It was very sweet, and just a little bit heartbreaking.

I knew she was up to something because first, she closed the door to the basement. I could hear dishes rattling around upstairs so I figured she was getting something to eat. A few minutes later she appeared with a plate for me; a turkey and cheese sandwich, chips, cubed watermelon in a small dish, two Oreos and a Diet Coke in a glass — with ice. It was all rather adorable.

She said, “I knew you were forgetting to eat again and if I didn’t do something, you wouldn’t have lunch today.” She was right.

It’s wonderful to have a girl who knows when sometimes, her mama needs taking care of, too.

But when the girl got home from school, she had persistent abdominal pain and swelling. Since the girl had an urachal cyst, we just don’t mess around with issues in that region. So I called UVa Pediatrics and got her a morning appointment. We spent about two and a half hours on that adventure which ended with a second appointment in radiology booked a couple of hours later (and lasted another two hours). Fortunately, nothing scary turned up in the ultrasound. Unfortunately, a diagnosis for the pain has not yet emerged, although the girl is doing better tonight.

In short, my day was sidelined as I hastily sent emails and made phone calls to rearrange my day and let people know I was not going to be where I was expected. Instead, we spent the day together at the hospital. The docs at UVa took good care of my girl and let us know what they were thinking every step of the way. It’s great to have a team at work that is understanding and caring when your priorities change suddenly; it’s also great to have doctors nearby who listen and work with one another across departments to care for a patient.

Looking back at Christmases past, I found this shot of the girl, age five, complete with bedhead and Christmas morning shock at the delightful gifts under the tree. That was a year of a whole lotta Barbie stuff, if I remember correctly.

At six, she was all about Polly Pocket. Boy do I not miss the days of those tiny plastic shoes. Believe it or not, she still has some of these in a box somewhere, and has dragged them out for younger friends to play with.

P.S. — the dog still shows her the same amount of respect.

Same bedhead, different year. For some reason we have no photos on file of Christmas 2003 so we’re skipping on to the year the girl was eight. See the socks she’s pulling out of her stocking? “Too Spoiled” they say. Yep, that pretty much sums up the girl that year.

Just so you don’t think I’m picking on her, I’m interrupting this post of the girl to share this photo of me, obviously having a really grand time on Christmas day.

Note to self: how many red cardigans have you owned over the years? Seriously? Could you remember NOT to wear a red sweater in the holiday photos this year?

Oh and you might smile a bit.

This must have been a year when I received kitchen appliances. Or exercise equipment.

The Christmas the girl was nine was a tough one. We had moved out of our house and into my in-laws, preparing to make the HUGE move across the country to Virginia just after the holiday. She and her brother were troopers, as happy to celebrate the holiday at the grandparents’ house as anywhere else. She made out like a bandit as usual, with tons of American Girl merchandise. And a suitcase. We were on our way to our new home just days after this shot.

The girl at 10.

She’s always been a ball of goof, that one.

Like her mother, I suppose.

It’s funny to look at this picture and think, wow, two years sure changes a kid a lot. Here she looks 10. Today? 20.

Well, maybe not 20. They just don’t stay little for very long, do they?

When the girl was 10 months old, her little baby bellybutton turned from an “innie” to an “outie” over a weekend. That’s weird, all by itself, but it was clear there was something amiss and of a serious nature when the bellybutton started to OOZE and the girl turned crankier than ususal (she was a cranky baby to begin with).

So the dad and I took the girl to the emergency room and spend a VERY LONG NIGHT there with residents who DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE.

The first thing the next morning, we ambushed the girl’s pediatrician by showing up at his office and urgently requesting an audience, which was granted. Where physicians all over St. Louis had NO IDEA what the girl had, our pediatrician took ONE LOOK and said, “Huh. I read a paper about this once.”

Thankfully, the girl’s pediatrician is a genius and a wonderful man who knew what the rare disease was, and what to do about it — whiz, bang — making a few phone calls and scheduling surgery for the girl the VERY NEXT DAY. I have to believe this man moved mountains for our little girl and to this day, I adore this man.

Let us back up and explain. The rare disease, the urachal cyst occurs when the umbilicus, that is, the part of the umbilical cord that is inside the baby and runs from the bladder to the place that eventually becomes the bellybutton. Normally, this part of the umbilicus dissolves and is reabsorbed. In less than one out of 200,000 people in the U.S., oops — it doesn’t. In some cases, the umbilicus develops into a urachal cyst, filling with fluid and becoming infected. And let me just tell you firsthand. EW!

The crack surgical team put our baby under anesthesia and cored her like an apple down to her bladder, sewed everything up the way it should be and created, using a purse-string stitch, the most darling artificial bellybutton you ever did see.

The girl was also left with a significant scar that extends about two inches vertically from her beautiful navel, a perfectly straight scar, very obviously surgical, which, when bikini-clad, gives the girl the opportunity to tell the story of how, despite the fake bellybutton, she is not a clone.

The girl and I agreed to tell you all this story for the other one-in-200,000 people in the U.S. who develop this rare disease and are FREAKED out by it to let them know what it is, that it has a treatment and that yes, everything will be OK.

OK. I’ve given some thought to this year. Archery set  with 5 arrows and a multi-color target. Must be compound and a lefty bow. Mom and Dad are getting me this. I know that already. My Sims 2 or 3 for the computer — computer version is just more fun. Animal Crossing City Folk, for Wii or DS, whichever. My Sims Kingdom, DS or Wii. Wii is preferred. I read the review, OK? That’s about it. Sorry if a few don’t completely fit the budget. But it isn’t too bad. I would be asking for an iPhone. Now which sounds better? Thanks again. Please forward to whom else it may concern!!

G-parents, Santa and other gift-giving folks, consider yourself notified.