How Baby

Happy birthday, Momo! At 11 you are, by all reasonable metrics, officially a tween now. But you can consider yourself a child for as long as you want, baby. You just… hold on to that.

The years of hosting birthday parties for adorable little gremlins who are excited by literally everything are coming to a close, as evidenced by hosting five tween girls last weekend for Momo’s eleventh (!!) birthday. I thought I was ready; I had all the cool things: Smash Bros, face masks, Minecraft party favors, a ‘cool’ party playlist, endless fun drinks and snacks for them to basically entertain themselves for 6+ hours, as will probably be the way of things from now on.

I thought I was ready. When five minutes into the party her friends were talking about ‘feet pics’, I realized:

…I have as much to learn about raising a tween girl in the 2020s as Momo has to learn about being one.

(The show in question, by the way, was the musical Chicago. The girls got a kick out of saying the word ‘Lipschitz.’)

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TRANSCRIPT

Panel 1: Momo and other similar-aged girls are sitting at a birthday table.
Girl: …anyway, it’s a really good show! You all should watch it. But you can’t watch it with children!

Panel 2: close-up of Momo’s face, awed. SFW: w o w

Panel 3: Momo, blank and cartoony-faced, pointing at herself
Momo: I’m a children.