I found myself humming the old Sesame Street tune last night as I reflected back on the trip the girls and I took last week to Denver.

Don’t get me wrong: It was a fantastic trip. Denver has a lot of things Phoenix doesn’t — including fabulous summer weather, a cool restaurant with a “pajama breakfast” for the kids, a hands-on art workshop space with (among other things) a pottery wheel (Annabelle’s entranced and Sophie took a turn, too) and this place called Casa Bonita.

Casa Bonita defies description, but one writer put it well (I’m paraphrasing) when he said it’s as though Tijuana and Disney had a bastard child and dumped it in a strip mall on Colfax (a sketchy part of town) in Denver. Cliff diving, an arcade, live shows, treasure chests — and the whole place smells just like it smells when you get on Pirates of the Caribbean. And the food is beyond terrible. It was awesome. (South Park’s spoofed it; worth a google search.)

More than anything, Denver has The Cousins. Ben, Kate and Sam — ages 10, 8 and 4. My sister Jenny and I had kids at the same time, except after the second, she kept going. It’s a tight fivesome, but as with any group of kids, there are squabbles and differences and hurt feelings. Annabelle and Kate are super-tight (I’ve written about this before) and Sophie wants in, in the worst way.

Jenny and I try to keep things balanced out — the girls need to include Sophie, but it’s important for Annabelle and Kate to have their own time, too. They don’t mean to leave her out, I don’t think. But sometimes they’re simply moving at a different speed; it’s not fair to always make them slow down. I watch the two of them together and think about what it would be for Annabelle to have a “typical” sister. And I feel sorry for myself, and sorry for her — and sorry for Sophie, too.

More than once during the trip, Sophie announced, “Mommy, I’m mad at you for no reason!” It took me a while to realize she was trying to tell me her feelings were hurt. She and her cousin Sam, the 4 year old, have a wonderful relationship — they fight like an old married couple, my sister says. She’s right. They play well together, too, and I watch them and wonder if that damn school psychologist was right; maybe Sophie does have the cognitive abilities of a 3 year old. And if she does, will she ever surpass that? Sam will get older, soon. He won’t want to play with her anymore.

One of these things is not like the other. Look at the three girls in the picture above, bellied up to the crepe bar, Sophie without the dexterity to sit on her feet — half Kate’s size (well, almost), looking for love.

She got a lot of it in Denver, don’t get me wrong. But I got a narrow glimpse into a future that’s widening.

I wonder how Sophie will handle it — how the rest of us will handle it. We’re still in the Salad Days, I think, though I feel it drawing short. Last night, back in Phoenix, I took the girls to dinner so Ray could work late. Annabelle and Sophie got each other giggling so hard they couldn’t stop, wrapped around each other on the other side of the booth from me, and I watched them, feeling enchanted.

“Sophie,” Annabelle said, when they paused for a breath, “if I had another sister I would cry and cry because she wasn’t you.”

Sophie beamed. Then Annabelle turned to me.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

“Yes I did,” I told her. “That’s lovely.”

Silently, I wondered why she felt the need to double check.