Happy Birthday Kendra

My baby turns 17 today. I can't believe it is only one more year until she will be an adult. I already wrote a lot about my feelings of her growing up here in anticipation of her birthday. It is so hard to even get any words out.
A few random facts about this lovely young woman:

• she referred to herself in third person consistently until she was 3 years old, saying things such as Kendra can't want ketchup
• she can blow her nose like a sounding trumpet, causing the whole family to wince and often yell in unison, "Kendra!"
  
• she has unique self-taught study habits - reading her entire biology chapter out loud in the middle of the night - she says it helps her commit it to memory
  
• she loves Moulin Rouge and Phantom of the Opera - the movies and soundtracks, which she makes us listen to ad nauseum ....the Phantom of the Opera is there...inside my mind......
  
• she is a bookworm - and from the time she was 11 until she discovered boys a few years later (or should I say one boy in particular) we forgot she had a lower half of her face, as all we could see were her eyes over the top of her book
• when she eats ice cream, she still wears it on her upper lip like a mustache, and never knows that it's there until you point it out
• when she was 2 and I was expecting her sister, her father who was supervising her in the building while I was having an OB appointment let her slip away from him and she rode down a glass elevator alone - waving and smiling at him as she went
• she exited the womb speaking in complete sentences
  
• I do not think she has ever slept one night of her life in a room alone
• she loves most vegetables and was known when she was small to have a melt-down in the produce section at the grocery store - but she loathes broccoli
• she bites her fingernails, and when she was younger, her toenails as well
  
• she has one of the best senses of humor, and is even able to laugh at herself

I love you Kendra. I am so lucky to get to be your mom!
I will be updating this throughout the day as her dad and siblings share their random thoughts. If you know Kendra - please comment with your own random facts, and I will add them here to this post!