My Girly Girl

Danielle is such a girly girl. Maybe it's more obvious to me because Tyler is indeed ALL boy.

She loves to dress up in her "princess ballerina" costumes. Her most frequently requested outfit is a shorts outfit that has Tinkerbell on the chest and a fairy type skirt over the shorts. (I don't think Tyler has a clue about what's in his dresser.) Tyler was reliving a dream he had the other day, so Danielle had to tell us about hers. Whether it was real or imagined, it was about "pink horsies". Ron bought new bikes for the kids the other day. We talked about what kind of bikes the kids would like to have, if possible. Tyler wanted a blue one with a hand-brake (like Grandpa Chevalier's). Danielle wanted "a pink one with a basket for my babies to ride in". She prances on her tiptoes to cross the room. Twirls for Daddy each time she wears a dress. Loves admiring herself in the mirror. (Tyler enjoys the mirror, too, but he's busy sticking his tongue out at himself. Danielle practices smiling and batting her eyelashes.) She's dramatic and whiny...in a princessy sort of way. Somehow, she's able to sort absolutely everything into a Daddy, Mommy, and Baby grouping. Doesn't matter if it's spaghetti - the big piece is the daddy one, medium size piece is the mommy one, the smallest one is the baby one - or stuffed animals. Absolutely everything can be classified in this way to her. (I'm glad her view of a family unit consists of both a mommy & a daddy. Not all kids are as lucky.) And if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she says "I want to be a mommy." Ahhh, she's following my career path. :)

To me, the most endearing part of her "girlyness" though is the way she plays mommy. There are days when she picks out a baby in the morning and takes care of it all day long. She will cradle the baby and walk very slowly, saying "Shhhh. My baby is sleeping." She will feed it a bottle and insist on taking it (and all its supplies) in the van with us. She has to dress and undress it. Pretend like she's giving it a bath. Feed it. Read to it. Rescue it from Tyler. She'll ask us if we'd like to hold her baby and then instruct us on the proper way to hold it. At night she'll tuck it into bed with her (and scream if the blanket covers its face). If I'm lucky, sometimes I hear her sing to her babies. On the way to the park today, I heard her singing to today's lucky doll: "Lullaby. Go to sleep. If the tree falls, the baby will break. Lullaby. Lullaby."

I know she may not always be such a girly girl, and that's ok with me, but right now I'm cherishing the memories it's creating.