Style, Pictures, and Colors

Julia went to school rocking another stylin' outfit today:



She has been SO excited to wear this outfit. She has had it picked out for five days. I'm serious. She has also had an outfit picked out for tomorrow for the same length of time. I can take the hint that she doesn't want to allow me ANY control over what she wears anymore. She is so done with the boring, regular old outfits I pick out.

Because of all of the above, she was not at all willing to let me have any input on anything she put on her body today. So we wound up with a bit of drama when I stepped in and told her she couldn't wear her Hello Kitty shoes, which have just been handed down to us, and are a full two sizes bigger than what Julia currently wears.

JULIA: Well, Mama, then what SHOULD I wear?
ME: How about your sneakers?
JULIA: No! Mama, I ALREADY promised Simi that I wouldn't wear sneakers the next time I come to school!
ME: How about your black dress shoes?
JULIA: (angrily pouting on the couch)
ME: Julia? Why don't you go upstairs and get your black dress shoes?
JULIA: Mama, I'm just feeling FRUSTRATED!
ME: I'm sorry you're feeling that way. What's the matter?
JULIA: Everyone just keeps TALKING to me about what shoes I'm going to wear!

Wow. Please, all you blog readers, forgive me for my error. How could I do that to my own daughter? I mean, talking about what shoes she's going to wear, especially when she's the one who brought up the subject, is about as egregious as it gets.

As you can see in the picture, she decided to go with snow boots.

Madeleine has unfortunately picked up some of Julia's contrary behavior; as you all know, she wants to say and do everything that Julia does. Unhappily, this means she has learned to spew out contrary nonsense when she's feeling aggravated. Case in point: yesterday as Madeleine sat grumpily on the couch, pouting over some inane thing, Auntie Caitlyn, who was loading pictures onto her computer, attempted to cheer Madeleine up. Clicking on a picture she had just downloaded, she called it to Madeleine's attention to try and distract her from her melt-down.



AUNTIE CAITLYN: (pointing to the above picture) Madeleine, who's that?
MADELEINE: (grouchily) No! That's NOT Madeleine.

Those kids of mine SURE know how to give it to you when they're angry.

While she wasn't in the mood for pictures at that moment, Madeleine certainly did enjoy doing "Funny Faces" on Auntie Caitlyn's computer, in which the camera distorts the contours of a peoples' faces in order to make them look as if they're in some sort of funhouse mirror. Madeleine's favorite image was the "swirl," in which the person looking into the camera got to watch her head twisting sideways or upside down into a spiral:


Melded, swirling Madeleine and Mommy heads.

Because she has no other way to describe the phenomenon shown above, Madeleine took to asking Caitlyn: "Can we do Funny Faces? Can you do 'What's happening to Madeleine's head' for me?"

One thing I love about Madeleine's growing verbal skills is her ability to come up with a creative way to work around terms and vocabulary she doesn't yet know. As in this morning, as she lay on the ground coloring. All yesterday afternoon, I kept asking the girls to put the top on the uncapped red marker I saw lying on the ground. Neither child paid me any heed, so finally, hours later, I popped the cap back on. This morning, as Madeleine began coloring with the red, the color began to dry out.

"Oh no, Mommy!" she wailed. "The red is turning off!"

Hopefully this will be a lesson learned, and the girls will listen to me next time I ask them to recap a marker, so that none of the other colors wind up turning off.