My record is now 1 win, 117 losses.

It doesn't matter how late she is up the night before or how sound asleep she is in the morning, when I am home and Julia needs to get up for school, all I have to say to get her up and going is one simple line:

"I guess I am going to beat you getting dressed."

You see, Julia has her mother's competitive gene. If there is even the mention of her getting beaten at anything...all of a sudden this stubborn little child turns into Super Girl determined to make you the loser of this challenge that lay before her.

Usually, once I say those words she is up and flying into her room, only to return two seconds later fully dressed before I had the time to get my bones to quit cracking. If I am really quick, I may get one sock on but that is all before she proceeds to taunt me with "I beat you! I beat you!" Everyday like clockwork, 100+ days during this school year - it was the same thing.

That was until a few weeks ago.

It was Julia's second to last day of school and while it appeared to be another normal morning with her dashing into her room to change into Beautiful School Girl, I noticed something odd. I was able to get both socks on...and pants with no Julia gloating.

"Everything ok, Julia?"

"Yeah, everything is fine."

I put my shirt on and snuck over to her bedroom door and peeked in. Julia was sitting on her bed - almost fully dressed, but just sitting there. I say almost because she had everything on except one arm in her shirt - and she seemed to be zoned out.

I took a few steps back and made enough noise to announce that I had finshed getting dressed and was heading downstairs for breakfast. Julia quickly exited her room fully dressed - complete with both arms in her shirt and exclaimed defeat...

"Oh Daddy, you beat me!"

Suddenly it hit me. She was sitting on that bed - probably for minutes - with that arm sticking out of her shirt waiting for me to finish getting dressed just so she could let me win this one time. As we walked down the steps together, I asked her about it.

"Did you let me win?"

She didn't answer with words, but with the biggest smile that melted my heart.

She gets that from her mom too.