And so it begins

Me and Shelby ... at lunch for her birthday (thank goodness I didn't embarrass her that day!)

I can't believe it's already happening. My daughter is barely seven and I'm already embarrassing her.  It happened two nights ago. And it was traumatic for both of us. There was a group of us visiting together. People I've known all my life and thus Shelby has known them and their children all her life too. They are pretty much family. But that didn't matter. I told a story about Shelby. It included her tooting loudly ... and that was enough to set her into a tail spin. There were tears. There was crying. There was all sorts of drama. Mind you, the same story, with a smaller crowd, drew fits of laughter from Shelby just 12 hours earlier.

"Mom, you embarrassed me. I'm so embarrassed. I can't go back out there," she screamed through the tears. "It's horrible. You shouldn't have told that story mom!"

I apologized profusely.  I comforted her. But seriously, I had no idea what I said would embarrass her liken that. And so it begins ... Navigating the mind field that raising a daughter is. I thought I had a few more years before all this started!