This kid. What can I say? Ever since she was born, shortly after a Red Sox win on Opening Day of the 1985 baseball season, my daughter Cait has been positively careening through life.

She is loud. She rarely sits still for more than two minutes. Her emotions are never far from the surface. She is impulsive, rambunctious, and unfailingly fun to be around. (And then you need a nap.)

She started preschool at age two (because she needed a LOT more social interaction than I was able to provide), was the only girl in a class with nine boys, and was more than able to hold her own.

“Cait is the one who leads the class in pounding on the table and chanting, ‘We want our snack!’” her preschool teacher, the long-suffering Mrs. Brown, told me, a bit wearily, at the end of her first week.

She is, well…A Little Bit Extra.

“When you’re so extra and it’s St. Patrick’s Day,” Cait posted last month, with a video that showed her stirring green food coloring into her coffee cup while listening to Irish jigs at 6:45 a.m. Because (despite my aspirations) I was never the Cool Mom, I had to look up the meaning of “extra” in that particular context.

An online urban slang dictionary informed me that “extra” means “over the top, excessive, maybe a little dramatic. Doing more than what the situation calls for. Often a little inappropriate.”

It was an “Aha!” moment.

Cait has been A Little Bit Extra since the day she was born, weighing 9 pounds and 14 ounces, in the middle of a spring snowstorm—feisty, quirky, exuberant, and determined.

We didn’t always find this quality—this Extraness—endearing. There was, for instance, that time when she was in middle school and couldn’t resist adding her own spin to her role in a class play.

It involved making a mildly obscene gesture onstage, after being unequivocally told, during rehearsals, that she was NOT TO DO THAT. It might have been done on a dare. She might not have believed there would actually be consequences. She might have been simply unable to resist playing for laughs.

Whatever the reason, it resulted in a three-day school suspension, a prohibition from participating in the end-of-the-year class trip, and a lot of tears.

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

It was nearly two decades before Mitch McConnell uttered those words about Elizabeth Warren, but we could have said the same thing about Cait…probably a few thousand times.

I have a theory that it’s the quirkiest, feistiest, most exuberant kids—the ones who ask the most questions, laugh and cry and scream and howl the loudest, and wear their parents down to a frazzle—who often turn into the most interesting, engaging, confident, and self-actualized adults.

Cait has more friends, and more fun, than anyone else I know. She channels her limitless vitality into working hard, and playing harder. She runs her own business, as well as works at physically demanding jobs, and still finds plenty of time and energy to hike, bike, run, or ski several times a week, usually with a like-minded posse.

Seven years ago, she piled all of her belongings into and onto her car and moved to Colorado, where she knew no one, with little more than the sketchy promise of a landscaping job and an apartment she’d found on Craig’s List. A couple of weeks later, on a call home, she mentioned that she was going to a wedding that weekend.

“How can you be invited to a wedding? You don’t even know anyone out there!” I said.

“Well, I do now,” she said. (Duh.)

Cait is A Little Bit Extra, and I’m so glad we never tried (well, not very hard, anyway) to squelch her spirit.

She is the best possible illustration that the parenting style with which I’ve always said I raised both my kids and my dogs—“hands off and hope for the best”—really can work out.

Cait celebrates every win, every holiday, every milestone, every success—both her own and her friends’—with boundless energy, unlimited generosity, and—always—the perfect outfit. She is honest, outspoken, passionate, and compassionate. She is loving and well-loved.

Happy birthday, Cait! You’ve always been A Little Bit Extra Just Exactly Enough.