The doorbell just rang. I knew my teenage daughter was expecting a friend. I was in my room knitting, because I'm recovering from a stomach bug. I stopped and listened for movement upstairs...waiting to see if my daughter will come downstairs to open the front door for her friend. Nothing. I picked up my cellphone and called my daughter. No answer. Instead, I got a text from her saying, "Hey." I responded, "GET THE DOOR." I would say I was in disbelief, but I wasn't. She's a teenager, and somehow, they become more self-centered than they were at four. Hard to believe, I know, but if you've ever parented a teen, you know it's the truth. And I remember 16. I know we are just entering the "I know everything, and Mom knows nothing" years. How long does that last? Till 25? Ugh.

I'm taking notes on all this teenage fun. I find that if I keep notes on it, it actually becomes humorous. I can laugh about it. Here are a few notes I've made:

• No matter what I wear, it's wrong, and she will wait till other people are around to tell me. Seriously? Seriously.
• Occasionally, I feel like a walking wallet. No joke. We just got home from vacation, and I noticed during that week that she heard nothing I had to say unless she needed money to purchase something she wanted. I'm not kidding.
• I sneeze wrong. And I breathe wrong. Oh, and I pronounce things incorrectly...usually, it's the names of rappers that I pronounce incorrectly. First of all, I didn't even know DJ Khaled and Khalid are two different people...and clearly, I pronounced one of them wrong.
• My resting face, while not "resting b**ch face," is apparently annoying to my daughter. She has asked, "Why are you making that face?" My response? "I'm not making a face. It's just my face." And of course, that gets an eye roll.
• Which leads us to this: an eye roll is the response to just about everything.
• If I linger in her room after we have talked about something, she will look at me for about five seconds before saying, "OK. You can go now."
• Apparently, everybody else gets to have more fun than our daughter does. Apparently, I'm the only mom who actually expects her to go to sports practice and do homework. We know that's not true, but she sure makes it seem that way.

That's not a complete list, of course, but it gets the point across. But here's the thing: just like most teenagers, behind all that sarcasm and eye-rolling is a sweet girl who still loves her parents and wants to please us. I know that, because she also does this:

• When she gets a good grade or a bad grade, she immediately calls me or texts me. If it's good, we cheer together. But if it's bad, she knows I will say all the right things to help her and encourage her...set her on the right track.
• When I'm not feeling well, she calls me before she leaves sports practice and asks if she can bring anything home to me.
• At the end of a recent vacation, when I asked her what her favorite thing about the trip was, it was the second day of the trip...the day we were together for the entire day.
• She actually uttered these words to me recently: "Mom, you do parenting right." What?!?! A high compliment? She didn't mean I'm a sucker. She meant we communicate really well with each other.

She's figuring it all out...and I am too. Teenagers are an interesting bunch, and we all need to remember we used to be teenagers. I know she needs my help navigating these years, and so far, she's doing pretty darn well. She's not perfect, but then again, neither am I.

As a teenager, she is somewhere between a child and a full-fledged adult. These years are interesting, and they are fleeting. Before I know it, she will be off to college and thinking she is way smarter and way cooler than I am...even more

than she does now! But she'll still call me...and not just for money. She'll call me to share accomplishments. She'll call me when she doesn't feel well or when she's sad. I know, because I did the same thing. In fact, when I had a stomach bug two days ago, I wanted to call my mom.

Gotta go give my girl a hug.