My stinky poo faced turd

Ladies and Gentelmen, Family, and friends, there was a time when giving a speech about Chloe would have consisted of me coming up here and opening this speech with 'chloe is a stinky poo faced turd', I'm here to talk a little about that time:

Chloe and I met quite abruptly in a hospital late one afternoon in May. It was an awkward meeting because well, she wasn't the person I'd expected to meet. This tiny pink jelly-person who would not stop crying or sleeping. It was at that moment that I decided Chloe was going to be a lot more interesting than I'd expected.

For the next six or so years, it would be a strange bitter sweet comic romance. Chloe was a slightly stubborn and pudgy thing would eat lots of sweets, cry a lot and hated having to share. As far as I could tell she really just enjoyed being pampered, and sleeping, and more often than not just sat on a patch of grass, at the edge of the pool or on the top of a slide, contemplating silently, refusing to budge or come down.

So after pushing her into several swimming pools, down slides, into the grass, down stairs, I'd moved on to coaxing her into eating things like dog poo, spoonfuls of English mustard, and generally strapping her into every disaster my imagination could imagine. Before long she came to accept that her life had other plans. Mine.

And I can't really remeber when, but a strange thing happened. She rather unwillingly started to play along. running around the house, swinging sticks, throwing punches, building forts, digging trenches, bleeding, drooling and crying all over the floors of our house in singapore. We became rivals, and we fought over everything little thing under the sun. Monopoly games would explode into fistfights, we'd smash each other's lego houses, strangle each other till we turned blue. We shared a room, we sang multiplication songs to each other, we pitched tents in imaginnary jungles, and would start out pretending to fight imaginary beasts before turning on each other. And before she knew it she'd quickly turned into a boy.

Today, Chloe sits on the floor in the guest room of our five bedroom house cutting stencils from paper, and gluing the silhouettes onto cards. Some pop song is playing in the background and she's enthusiastically singing along as she shimmies around the room, while embellishing each sheet of artcard kind of fuzzy character from 'Winnie the Poo'. I think these are the invitation cards most of you would have received about tonight. She's an emo kid who's a sucker for romantic comedies, who listens to songs from romantic comedies and reads epic novels about comic romance. She loves shopping and face wash and keeping to herself while she completes a winnie the pooh jigsaw puzzel over several days.

Watching her now, I can't help but wonder how alien those boyish days were. After all she's still the little pink jelly baby, who I first met all those many years ago, the one who likes good food and sleeping and sitting pensively in her little corner of the world. Where did she go? My tenatious rival who almost choked me to death, my ackward little side kick, my trench-digging companion. How unnatural it must have been for you to have put on such a brave face, and take everything I dished out with your chin up and a grin on your face.

So here's to you,

My stinky poo faced turd
My a disenchanted sidekick,
My awkward little hero,

Thank you for everything, your resilience, your bravado and your ability to always keep bouncing back to be by myside no matter hot hairy or estranged the situation or predicament may have been.

You were always able to take and give so much more than I ever could.

Happy 21st! Chloe chan