Losing Control of my Finest Creation

Every time we leave Costco (and since we live a mile away we are there more often than normal people), the man at the doorway waves to Brenna and says, "Goodbye, Princess."   While most girls would giggle and bashfully wave, Brenna flips her hair and offers an aloof two-second obligatory 90-degree rotation of her hand.

My daughter is smart yet stubborn, clever yet complicated and amazing yet exhausting.  I love her to death.  But, it is one thing to play you are a princess, it is another thing to believe you are a princess.  These days, I am beginning to question who runs the house.  If Brenna is a princess,  then technically I am a queen.  However, it's a title she refuses to acknowledge.

When I was about 6 months pregnant, David and I were at the mall and I was relaxing by a fountain.  There were a few kids surrounding the fountain, totally fascinated, finding it to the coolest thing ever.   Mind you, my estrogen levels were off the charts and even a Charmin toilet paper commercial made me cry, but I couldn't help feeling sad that my years of learning something new every second and being enthralled by even the simplest things were over.  And even worse, I spent them without appreciating them.

I shared my feelings with David right then and there in the mall, with tears streaming down my cheeks.  He told me that I would get to re-live all those childhood moments through the eyes of my children.  I was comforted.

I have always liked everything pink and princess.  I don't really remember owning a lot of princess stuff but I do remember the princess hat I picked out at Disney land.  It was pink, tall and pointy with a pink veil. I wish I still had it.

The moment of wearing such a princess hat was over me, but  I was excited to re-live it through my daughter.  And I did not waste much time.  Obviously Brenna did not elect to wear this princess crown and pink tutu when she was three months old.

Nor did she understand the very basic plot of her movie, A Princess Rides a Pony.  (Directed by myself)

And she did not she pick out her first princess dress two years ago.

I have a friend who loves hair bows.  So, her 6 month old daughter has (literally) 100 hair bows, many of them custom made.  Some of them are bigger than her head. Her daughter has no hair - she never asked for those bows.  Just like my daughter never asked for this:

She doesn't even have the maturity that is necessary to handle the stress of having such a selection of pretty poofiness.  One minute she was be happy and admiring her dazzling self in the mirror:

And then, without warning, she will spontaneously collapse onto the floor, into a pink, dramatic heap:

Basically I created this princess.  I own it.

Sometimes though, I wish just bought her hair bows.