Gloria days

Summer hang-time with my favorite 7-year-old

Earlier this month, my cousin's daughter Gloria made her yearly trip up to Milwaukee. I don't get to see her often — in fact, it really has been just once a year for the past few years. It's always an event, seeing how much she's grown. I remember a few years back when she was bored at the Winnie the Pooh movie and uber-scared of Ursula in The Little Mermaid. Last summer Gloria unleashed her inner goofball, helped in the kitchen, and sobbed when she lost at Old Maid (there's no shame in that — I cried plenty over Candy Land in my day). 

Now Gloria is seven. She'll be starting 2nd grade in the fall and she's been keeping up with her studies this summer. In fact, when I picked her up for some quality hang-time (read: mac n' cheese, Aladdin, and hot fudge sundaes with two kinds of sprinkles), she brought along a 200-page workbook, the likes of which she actually completed during the car ride over to my apartment. I love her enthusiasm for adding, subtracting, and greater than/less than! 

Her other big things include: plans to start a band (we've all been there) and the phrase "On a scale of 1 to 10..." — and using it properly. For example, "On a scale of 1 to 10, I play the piano a 9." That's some amazing in-your-face confidence, and all I can do is hope little Gloria never loses sight of that. Hey, you can't blame a girl for hoping! I can't wait to see what next year brings.