Today is the little angel's seventh birthday. As we waited for the school bus, she danced around the driveway singing, "It's my birthday! It's my birthday!"

There are so many things I could've said back, how much I love her, how her face makes my pupils dilate and my dopamine surge, how I physically miss her when she's gone, how proud of her I am, what a wonderful, sweet, funny, smart human being she is.

But instead I said, "Happy birthday!" She won't realize how much I love her until much later in life, and that's okay.