Today we were trying to get everything ready for Annabelle’s first day of preschool tomorrow. Henry was trying to walk around the rug in my slippers and Annabelle was hanging from the curtain rod in her closet doing her “exercises.”
Annabelle said, “Mom, I need my red dress that’s a unicorn.”
“I don’ t think you have a red dress with a unicorn on it,” I said, putting extra clothes in her backpack.
“Mom! My unicorn!” she said more emphatically.
“Sweetie, what unicorn?”
“Mom! For school!”
“Oh, your uniform!” I finally got it.
She nodded, exasperated with me. Last year we signed Annabelle up for a great little preschool here in New Orleans where the little ones wore uniforms. She loved her uniform, but the first day of school they tried to change her diaper and she refused to ever go back. At two years old, that was fine with us.
She does love to choose her outfits and is a toddler fashionista, or a “Fanista” as she calls herself. When she chose her pajamas the other night she said, “I want to wear those mom, they’re my Jackie O.’s.”
This terrifies me. She’s been overhearing my conversations with my sister about my new Jackie O. dress. We’ve decided to become tomboys in an effort to move in another direction away from hair, makeup, and clothes. We’re planning to climb trees and play in the mud and catch a snake or maybe a snail (not quite as slithery or as fast or as dangerous for that matter).
As soon as it cools off, that is—we’re wilting magnolias here in this steamy heat!
