No longer my little girl...?

We have over a month to go until Olivia, my six year old, turns seven.

The present suggestion list, which she meticulously scribes at the front of her secret lockable diary is lengthening.

Famous Five books are very babyish, apparently. The Saxby Smart: Private Detective series is much more de rigueur, according to Miss Nearly Seven.

She also tells me she wants some glitter nail-polish, in blue please.

Top of her list is currently a new leather handball and gloves to match - she is a demon handball player at school, apparently.

But she yearns, some days, just to sit and play with her younger sister at imaginary "shops" with nothing more complicated than buttons for money and empty cereal boxes as their gourmet retail stock. So a plastic pink toy cash register has also been requested.

I have suggested a watch - a traditional Timex that she has earned by the learning of telling the time - which she concurred is a good idea. As long as it has a pink strap. And as long as I still tell her when it's her bedtime.

A moment later she needed reassurance that her advancing age of seven is not actually too old for fairy bread at her birthday party.

That she has picked a cake depicting a cartoon ladybird from the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book makes me yearn for a more innocent time.

She is sensitive - today she may be crying over the desire to have her ears pierced. Tomorrow the tears may revert to flowing over a much loved lost teddy.

Definitely not yet a pre-teen. But no longer my little girl either....

Tell me all this is normal? That what she is going through will smooth out? That I will cope with her growing up so fast?