Her name is really Ann, and she's tired of being small. So she wants a baby brother, so she'll be bigger!. When you're seven, you can get away with logic like this, because it all makes sense at that age.

Ann sort of surprised us (although an obstetrician and a midwife shouldn't really admit that.) But as soon as she came, we realised that this kid definitely wanted to be here. Almost as soon as she could walk, she was running. We have a wonderful video of her at age 14 months, running around the entire first floor of our house, leading, and eventually exhausting her two older siblings. Shortly after that, she taught herself how to dribble a basketball, and she hasn't let up since. Anything to do with using her body or playing sports, she picks up in an instant. Here's a partial list of the sports she's picked up on so far: basketball (she now hits better than 50% of her shots with a regulation ball in an 8-foot hoop, and can dribble-drive past her dad), soccer, baseball (bats both righty and lefty), football (she's the only one in the family who can throw a perfect spiral), ice skating, skiing, gymnastics, roller blading, biking (the best strength-to-weight ratio of any of my stokers).

All this activity comes with a price. At age two, she toured Disney World with a broken arm, and went on a family ski trip with a broken foot at age 5. I'd warned her, just as I did all my kids, about the hazards of jumping from high on the stairs, having broken my foot from the third one up at age 7. She was chasing a little boy around our house -running, what else? - and jumped from the half-way point; as soon as she hit, she announced she'd broken her foot. Self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.

She's also very into books. Not reading them, but making them. Just as we'll find her sister staying up all hours reading something, we'll catch Ann missing sleep trying to write something, add pictures to it, and stapling it together for her latest book. Stories about monsters, friends, family, the outside.

As the youngest, she takes a lot of grief, but she insists on standing out. And, she's everybody's friend. By Sunday night, she's always exhausted, having visited everybody she knows at least once during the weekend.

We all can't wait to see how she turns out.