Favorite Daughter

DH and DD used to have this interchange where he would tell her that she's his favorite daughter, to which she would respond, "But I'm your ONLY daughter!" How true that is for me. Interacting with DD can be quite a challenge for me, and DH often remarks that this will only get worse as she gets older.

For example, last night she was practicing her piano lessons. All week she has been practicing before I get home from work. Despite being a control freak sometimes when it comes to her piano playing, I allowed that because I was already having a stressful week. On Thursday night, however, she told me that she wanted to practice with me on Friday. I was thinking to myself, sarcastically, "Great! I'm SO pleased about that!" She doesn't do well when she practices at night when she's tired, and I also don't cope well at night when I'm tired. Anyway, as per our usual encounter, she shed some tears, I stormed off, and DH took over. She did much better when she practiced this morning, by the way, and our interchange was much friendlier.

One of the "side effects" of having a daughter is that I get to do "girly" things with her. I've never been very "girly" and actually, she isn't either (see the Super Soaker photo posted above), but she loves "girly" things and having her around has made me appreciate some of those things. I didn't used to care for the color pink, but she LOVES it and it looks good on her, so I buy it for her and now I buy it for myself, too. I didn't used to care about what handbag I used. In fact, I was satisfied getting the cheapest ones or getting my dear sister M's designer hand-me-downs. I haven't bought a whole bunch of bags or anything, but having a DD who loves bags has made me notice bags more and I'm sure I've bought more since she's been born than I've ever bought before in my life.

Today we painted DD's nails. I really need to get DH to take a picture of us doing this one of these days, but he wasn't home at the time. I didn't used to care about that too much before either, but I routinely do my toenails now. The fingernails are still bare, but mostly because of my line of work and the constant hand-washing. Over time DD has become a bit more patient with painting her nails and she can stay still a whole lot longer. She favors any color with glitter, especially pink, of course. She chose a darker color once, but I had to redo them every week, which is still too time-intensive for me, so now we stick to light colors that aren't as obvious when they need retouching.

Something hilarious happened today. DS#3 came upstairs and started watching us. I was afraid he was going to knock something over, but I guess he was fascinated enough that he was staying still. To my surprise, after I finished DD's nails, he plopped himself down next to me and said what else but "My turn!" (see yesterday's post). I thought to myself that DH would FREAK, but DS#3 was very insistent and I figured that the clear base/top coat that I was using would be subtle enough to not matter in the end, especially if it was just his toes. However, when I finished with the clear polish, he pointed to the colored bottle. *GASP* I thought again to myself how DH would FREAK! At that point I yelled downstairs to DS#1 that he needed to get a camera. When he heard what I was doing, he laughingly said, "No, No, No! No, Eric!" Since he was playing his PS3 game at the time, that also meant no camera. I managed to put very small dabs on DS#3's toes so that he would feel the applicator but so you couldn't really see anything but the clear polish. Then, when he started asking about his fingernails I couldn't go on with it anymore. I asked DS#1 to come upstairs and distract his little brother so I wouldn't have to do it. At this point, DH had arrived home and when he heard about what was happening he raced right up and didn't bother trying to distract DS#3, he scooped him up and took him downstairs. I wanted to get a photo of DS#3's toes, but I didn't get a chance today. I'll have to try tomorrow so I can post it here.*WINK*