Scraped knees paled in comparison. The time I got my five-year-old index finger trapped in the checkout belt at the grocery store? Couldn’t touch it. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, measured up to the searing agony of having my long hair brushed by my mother. The pulling. The tangle-trapped combs. It was…horrific. So horrific, in fact, that I swore up and down, in between sobs and threats of running away from home (forever and ever) (oh, and she would never find me) (also, she’d be SO SORRY), that I would never inflict such pain on my own little girl when I was a mother.

Yeah. So about that.

It’s not like it’s my fault. I would have truly cut it a long time ago, or at least taken her for more than the occasional split-end trimming, but nooooo. Adam is adamant that His Little Girl will have long hair, like All Little Girls Have, because that is what you are supposed to do when You Have a Little Girl. I argue. I make points and counterpoints. I reason. But it’s like logic won’t touch him, which is particularly stupefying when you consider that part of Adam’s double major in college was philosophy.

Then I went to BlogHer. And Adam and Aura had four long, tangle-drenched, tantrum-laced days alone.

We have a haircut appointment for later this week. When I actually take time to feel something other than smarmy satisfaction, I realize that I will miss the long ponytail.

But somehow we’ll all survive. Plus, I really don’t want to be the mother of a three-year-old runaway. They really look down upon you in moms’ groups for that.

On an exhaustingly regular basis, she asks me if I’d “like some lipstick,” then proceeds to rub the thing all over my general mouth area. But the other day she paused in the middle of the rubbing. “Mommy?” she asked. “How do you really put on lipstick, real lipstick?”

I paused, too. “Um,” I said. “Well, I’m not all that sure, honey. I kind of still need to learn how to use lipstick.”

Aura patted my shoulder consolingly. “We’ll learn together,” she replied, then stuck a toy curler in my hair and got out the toy crimping iron.

Yes. At 33 (freshly minted this week, thank you very much), I suppose it is about time I learned how to wear lipstick properly. It’s not as if I haven’t tried before–I have. There was a prom! And this work party of Adam’s about…let’s see…five years ago! Granted, I spent 57% of each event in the bathroom, frantically staring in the mirror to convince myself that I did not in fact have lipstick on my teeth.

Dug out the five-year-ago lipstuff. Nearly positive this brand no longer exists. FYI.

There. I admitted it: I don’t wear lipstick because it terrifies me. Some people fear heights. Others fear communicable disease, or, you know, death. Me? I fear lipstick. How do you wear it without worrying? How you know if your upper-lip-challenged (as in hardly there) lipline is not betraying you? I’ll stand there in Sephora, battling vertigo as I stare down the metallic tubes and twinkling vials and good God APPLICATORS, and it’s as if I’ve stumbled into a parallel universe. A make-up know-how universe, home to the Planet of Proper Lipstick Application, which I might be allowed to visit if I figure out how to speak the language of Matte, Glossy, and Sheer.

But I know it’s time to get with the program. It’s gotten to the point where I’m a little…sensitive about this lipstick-less existence. At our Moms’ Night Out dinners, I watch the other preschool mothers out of the corner of my (mascaraed! really!) eye, and their mouths are these gorgeous slick slashes of wonder. I mean, they line their lips AT THE TABLE. WITHOUT A MIRROR. It causes one to wonder if they also DRIVE with THEIR EYES CLOSED and it makes me feel INCOMPETENT.

Plus, the other night, as I was dressing for a rare night out, Adam looked me up and down and remarked, “You know what would make that outfit even better? If you tried a little lipstick.”

To which I retorted, “And you know what would make your outfit better? If you were STRUCK MUTE.”

See? From these long-naked lips comes vitriol. Truthful vitriol, of course, but vitriol nonetheless. Sigh. Perhaps I’ll start with a satin finish. I bet that’s what all the nice girls do.

That princess book was pretty much the only princess book Aura has ever chosen from the library. THANK GOD.     

This is how I feel about THAT ONE.

 Wait. It’s not just me, is it? There are others out there who hear princess stories and gag on the offensiveness and tiresomeness of it all, right? I mean, COME ON. Sure, pickings were slim in the Women’s Lifestyle Changes Department centuries ago, when most of these fairy tales were first penned.  But marrying well cannot possibly still count as true ambition, at least not in this day and age. You don’t find the quest for royal marriage in most of Disney’s “boy stories,” do you? Nope. In those stories,  talking cars win championship races and save floundering towns. I have yet to see one championship in a princess story, other than the breathless battle to get home by midnight without losing your other glass slipper. 

A GLASS SLIPPER, PEOPLE. Cinderella runs around in shoes made of GLASS. As in glass that SHATTERS and CUTS and MAIMS. Yet I’m the one going to jail if Aura rides her tricycle on the driveway without a helmet.    

ALSO. Real feet are not as small as a royal messenger's hand. I don't think. (I'm a size 9. So.)

Oddly, the princesses-are-always-beautful thing doesn’t really bother me. Of course I don’t think little girls should be obsessed with their appearance. But I enjoy an eyebrow wax and pedicure as much as the next girl, and I don’t think the unending global search for physical perfection is going to, well, end. (To clarify: I don’t actually enjoy waxing. As a matter of fact, I can think of approximately 472,000 things I’d rather do than have my eyebrows waxed. However, THIS IS WHAT SNOW WHITE TAUGHT ME.)   

There is no way those suckers got that way through simple plucking.

I guess all I’m saying is that when we’re auditioning for role models, maybe princesses shouldn’t be first in line. At least not until they bulk up their resumes. I for one am going to need something besides First twenty years of life: Scrubbed and cleaned; locked in room by evil stepmother/witch/absentee father; escaped through help of magic/woodland creatures/plot hole; found salvation in figurehead royalty. For pete’s sake, Rapunzel spent eons locked in that tower, doing nothing but growing hair. Couldn’t she have once thought, “Hey! You know what I’m doing when I get out of here? I’M GOING TO GET MY FREAKIN’ M.B.A.!”  

Perhaps I'm aiming a bit high in this case. If not the M.B.A., then at least a cosmetology license.

Recently, as we were running late for an appointment, Aura lingered in the hallway, trying to zip her jacket. “No, Mommy!” she cried out when I tried to help her, swatting my hands away. “I want to do it by myself!”

It was all I could do not to keep rushing her or tell her to forget zipping up altogether. Instead, for once, I forced myself to simply stand and wait. And after a couple of minutes, she did zip the jacket.

“Look, Mommy!” she exclaimed happily. “I did it all by myself!”

That? That right there is the only kind of princess story she needs. 

A minute or so into our tour, Aura had already stopped listening to my speech on the importance of higher education, preferring instead to climb staircases and run on the lawns. I was soon reduced to talking to myself, raising my voice during the important parts to regain Aura’s attention. “Schools like Harvard are certainly a possibility IF YOU BUCKLE DOWN,” I yelled. “Never forget that MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS can be yours!”

It was somewhere around the time I was explaining college’s potential for “LIFELONG FRIENDSHIPS!” and “SELF DISCOVERY!” that I first noticed the many flyers dotting the campus. The more of them I read, the softer my diatribe became.

By the time I finished reading these, I was starting to change my tune. “But there is certainly nothing wrong with smaller, lesser known schools!” I called to Aura as she whipped back and forth in front of the famed Widener Library. “Many state schools produce a DIZZYING array of successful graduates!” I cried out,  pulling Aura back toward one of the campus gates. Every time a passing student smiled at Aura, I glared in return, muttering things like “Sexual deviant!” under my breath.

Then I saw this flyer.

It wasn’t until Aura started tugging on my hand that I realized I had been standing in front of this particular flyer for an unnecessarily long time. But…vajazzled? In a legendary place of higher learning? The editor in me took offense with the j in place of a g, the proofreader in me bemoaned the underline in place of italics, the music lover in me reared back in horror by the bastardization of jazz.

And the mother in me? “FORGET WHAT I SAID,” I announced to Aura, scooping her up and racing for an exit as fast as my legs could carry us. “THIS IS NOT THE SCHOOL FOR YOU.”

Another day, another $48,868 per year saved. And Aura will never touch a stick-on jewel again.

DAY 8

Setting: 1980s, Earth

…And God looked down upon what he had created and was not pleased. “These people!” God said. “They are spending wildly and unwisely. Just look at all those Swatch watches and Tupperware parties. It is now time to show them the error of their ways.”

And so God introduced a new creation, one He believed would finally and quickly demonstrate to people how foolishly they were wasting their money. It was a creation, He predicted, that would end the problem once and for all. It was:

THE CLAW MACHINE

Unfortunately, God may have given His people a little too much credit. Turns out that as soon as one generation learns its Claw Machine lesson, another one comes along and needs some firm, costly educating, all over again.

Everyone blames the recession on the mortgage industry, but God? As always, He knows better.

***The winner of the Linaloos.com giveaway is Val!  Yay, Val!

Turns out that those worries–like most of the million or so I toss around every day–were completely unfounded.  Always an enormous fan of her grandmother, Aura is thrilled that Grammy is living here. That Smoky Jo, Cat of Destruction, came along for the ride is like icing on the cake. Capitalizing on the fact that my mother is often confined to the couch, Aura is smothering her with granddaughterly love, requests to use her camera phone, and oft-repeated demonstrations on her newly acquired scooter and Sit N Spin.  (By the way, you guys and I really need to sit down sometime and have a nice, damning post on the Sit N Spin. How is it that a toy so wonderful, so revered in my youth is such a flaming piece of crap today? Plastic shouldn’t bend that way, people. For God’s sake, this is the AGE OF TECHNOLOGY.)

Aura has also thrown all regard for her grandmother’s privacy out the window. As I was helping my mom get dressed the other day, Aura burst in, coming to a screeching halt in front of my mother. Looking her grandmother over with her hand on her hip, Aura declared, “Grammy! You look really cute in that!”

“That” was a bra. Now, it’s not like Aura hasn’t seen me shirtless from time to time. That’s the least of my worries right now, when I can’t even use the bathroom without a 40-inch-tall companion. But there was something about my mom’s bra that really put a bee in Aura’s bonnet.  Since that morning, I often find her kneeling in front of my mother’s bureau, rifling through her underwear drawer. Yesterday, she pranced downstairs wearing one of Grammy’s bras like a backpack.  “What do you think?” she crowed, twirling so we could get a good look.

My mother and I have attempted time and time again to explain that Aura won’t need such under-the-clothes support for many, many years. And yes, when pressed, I do explain in vague, Crayola-happy terms why Big Girls need bras and what those things they support are meant to do.

But I can only handle so much. This morning, Aura pulled off her pajama top, looked down at her chest, and asked me, “See anything there yet?” And that was just about that.  While I simply answered “No!” and smiled winningly, I was actually putting my plans in place.  First, we are going to need some really heavy-duty duct tape.  I figure we can wrap her little chest kind of like some cultures used to bind feet. If it appears by age 12 that this is not working, then we’ll just lock her in her room. It really won’t be as cruel as it initially sounds.  We’ll pipe in the theme song from “Imagination Movers,” and we’ll construct a really nifty slot through which we can slide her food trays.

Because my little girl is never going to wear anything like a bra. She’s going to stay little and smell sweet and believe every word I say. She’s always going to make me pretend tea and serenade me with Mika lyrics and grin wildly when I’m the last person she sees at night and the first person she sees in the morning.

But to be on the safe side, I’m double-checking the mail from now on. God forbid a Victoria’s Secret catalog ever makes its way into her hands.

I swear. She was already sitting down.

Annnyway. I fully understand that it is ridiculous to want to urge Aura to take more risks at the playground, to egg her on until she decides to tackle the big swirly-whirly slide. And I really do acknowledge that the fact that she was talking at eight months and knew the alphabet by 12 months (thanks, refrigerator magnets!) is completely separate from her prowess on the wobbly bridge or the low monkey bars.

I refuse to go near the big swirly-whirly slide. At least while you are watching me.

But then I remember how fervently I believed that being a soccer star would have improved my abysmal junior-high experience and I find myself prompting loudly, “Come on! You CAN climb that (really not very intimidating) ladder by yourself!”  I think of how well Aura does at so many other things and I’m suddenly bribing her with a trip to the bakery for five brownies if she mounts the see-saw without a boost from me. When, really, all she wants to do is go at her own pace, climb through the tunnel, and maybe track down a few pine cones over by the swings.

And you know what? I’m finally realizing that doing what she does is fine. Absolutely fine. I’ve seen her go down the big slide, so I know she can do it.  And I’ve also seen plenty of other kids her size refuse to put one fingertip on the monkey bars. For all I know, she’ll hit four and transform into the biggest little jock this town has ever seen. Or maybe she’ll hit four and just continue to love dancing in the living room and reading her books and building the most elaborate magnet-block towers this side of the Atlantic.

Either way, sometimes a kid just needs to go outside, sit on a duck, and simply be three years old.

Do not be fooled by my bow-adorned appendages. I am not a bunny with whom to trifle.

Just to be clear, that’s Bunny BB.  He will not respond to a simple ”Bunny.” He routinely ignores ”BB.” He is BUNNY BB.  It is very minutely possible that his name is the result of certain parents maniacally trying to instill phonics and word sounds at too early an age (six months “Milk! Makes a mmm sound! M! M!” seven months: “Peas! Makes a ppp sound! P! P!” eight months: “Bunny! Makes a…”), but really, who am I to point fingers?

Bunny BB is Aura’s absolute favorite best friend in the whole entire world and universe. He  is also necessary if any sleeping is to occur. There is no excuse for Bunny BB to be missing at any bedtime, ever. Even when, say, he has been vomited upon by a H1N1-infected child and therefore must undergo emergency midnight laundering and drying. Take him and hell will raineth down. In a really baddeth way.

In the past year, Bunny BB has acquired a sidekick, the aptly but perhaps not creatively named Duckling (pronounced Duck-a-ling). When not being suffocated by 33 pounds of sleeping three-year-old, the two enjoy lounging on inflatable couches, often with personal grooming tools.

While Bunny BB’s background is known and vetted (Auntie Juliana, Toys ‘R’ Us, November 2006), Duckling’s provenance is fuzzy (snort). Family legend has it that the mother of an aunt’s cousin first brought Duckling to us, but I am leaning toward Bunny BB himself, whom I believe was sick of being the only one drooled upon in the crib. After years of patiently observing toddler computer gaming, Bunny BB knows his way around a laptop. I wouldn’t put it past him to have ordered himself up a little friend, just to get a break now and then.

Overall, Bunny BB has been a loyal, dependable stuffed friend. Yet he has a fatal flaw, one which Adam and I have known and feared since he first arrived years ago. He is literally irreplaceable. From the moment we first realized his inherent value (sometime around when we placed him in Aura’s crib and she started sleeping through the night), we have searched high and low, here to yonder, for a new Bunny BB. You know, a bunny we could tuck away, a bunny to be used only In Case of Emergency. We have trolled multiple Toys ‘R’ Us locations, across several states. We have paged through listing after listing of Animal Alley (BB’s provenance) stuffed toys on eBay, only to be crushed again and again by a pink gingham lion or a blue gingham rabbit (which is distinctly different from a bunny, to be clear). A few months ago, we finally gave up, leashed Bunny BB to the confines of the house, and switched from the delicate cycle to hand-washing.

Then one night, for no reason I can remember, I decided to do a little more Google legwork. Sadly, I did not find another Bunny BB. Instead I discovered that we are not the only family willing to pay up a couple of paychecks to get our hands on him. As a matter of fact, there are entire sections of blogs, complete with mailing lists and pleas from families who have been sleepless for months, begging for information on replacement Bunny BBs. It’s like a freakin’ pandemic, people.

Knowing this, I look at Bunny BB a little differently these days. Sure, he still seems pretty floppy, and kind of smelly, and if we’re all being honest with each other, his bow tie has seen better days. But now I know that sucker is VALUABLE. And you’d better believe that as soon as he loses his appeal, I am so selling him for a month’s worth of mortgage payment. Or at least enough for a really, really good facial.

The rest of the story is sadly predictable: Aura saw the blue soda and wanted it. I said no, though I did hint at a future dessert if lunch went well. Suddenly there was a meltdown to beat all meltdowns, and when it didn’t end, I was forced to carry through and take her home with no lunch. As I gazed down at her, half-prone on the filthy food-court floor, her tears mixing with other people’s dropped french fries and crumpled receipts, I found myself oddly devoid of any embarassment whatsoever. Sure, I was spitting magenta flames of rage as I dragged her through the mall screaming and sobbing, and I certainly considered slapping her for the first time ever (deciding against it upon determining the resulting wails would be even louder than the current ones). But embarrased? Nah.

This is a fairly big deal for me, someone who has always worried too much about what others might think. It seems that parenthood has realigned the stars a bit for me, refixing emotional priorities and redefining “judgmental.” Before we had Aura, I’d raise an eyebrow at kids who screamed uncontrollably at Target, or gave Adam a knowing that-will-never-be-us look at restaurants when tantrums went on and on. But now, well, I just know better. Yes: Several of those tantrums I witnessed in stores and restaurants were probably the product of parents spoiling their kids, or setting a precedent of giving in if the screaming became loud enough. But I am sure many, MANY others were just parents letting their kids scream until they realized that things weren’t going to change–that they were just not going to get that blue soda. And to those parents, I say: More power to us, stay strong, and just don’t make eye contact on your way out of the store.

…………………..

Update #1: Aura screamed through the parking lot, all the way home, and while being forcibly carried to her bedroom and deposited in her bed, fully clothed and unfed. Wailing continued for one minute after the door was shut, and then there were two glorious hours of nap. When she awoke and Adam sat down with her for a tete-a-tete about tantrums, she readily admitted such behavior was naughty. Then she attemped to negotiate a blue soda on a future trip to the mall, offering to have it for dessert. Really, you have to admire such cunning tactics in a preschooler.

Update #2: In the spirit of full disclosure, Aura’s typical disposition is more like this:

Hmm.  Perhaps we just need to move closer to the ocean.  I’ll get right on that.

And then I did the it’s-midnight-let’s-make-sure-she’s-still breathing check (report: she was; that SIDS paranoia is a tricky habit to break) and I noticed that, when stretched out, Aura’s feet nearly touched the end of the crib. After sobbing for 502 hours, I decided the time had come, albeit earlier than planned.

The Big Girl Bed arrived last Thursday. It is a wee bit larger than is probably necessary, but damn it, it’s the sleigh bed Mommy always wanted as a child and if I have to live vicariously through my two-and-a-half-year-old to get it, then so be it. Aura loves it, despite some difficulty adjusting to the idea of rails that you can smash your shins against when climbing in. However, said smashing often results in an ice pack, and ice packs rank high on the Aura’s Favorites list, somewhere lower than jelly beans but definitely above paper-clip chains.

And I have to say: While I miss the idea of the crib and the idea of her as a true “baby,” the bed has its perks. Now I can crawl in with her, right after she wakes up in the morning. Now we can snuggle more comfortably as I read her stories, her head resting against my chest. And now, instead of looking down at her, I can lie right next to her and breathe in her sweet, drool-scented smell, and remember that she is indeed still my baby.

Oh, crib. How I miss ye.