Girly Girl

I've secretly wanted to get Tessa's ears pierced for a long time, but wanted to wait until she wanted it done as well. That day came this weekend, and while I would love to say it was an incredible mother-daughter bonding trip, it didn't got exactly as planned. Mike and Cortny were visiting from Seattle and we talked about going on Saturday with my mom while they were taking their jet-lag afternoon nap, but ended up putting it off until Sunday. I decided to take just her and Morgan, so we headed to the Claire's in Deerfield Towne Centre around noon on Sunday. Taking the advice of another mom I know, we went on a weekend so there would be two workers and could do both at the same time. Of course, we went at the one time there was only one worker, so that option didn't end up working out for us. We decided to proceed one ear at a time, as Tessa was very excited to do it.

After vetoing these "lovely" daisy studs, she settled on sparkly "diamonds" like Mommy's and before we knew it, she was in the chair, being marked with the infamous purple dots that come before the earrings. Her poor little bottom lip quivered and I knew she was scared, but she sure did put up a brave front. Until the first earring went through. Her screams could probably be heard three stores down and I honestly thought we'd leave the store with just one earring in. One purple lollipop later she was back in the chair crying the saddest little tears as the second earring went through. And then she was fine. The funny thing was that the little girl after her was crying too and Tessa said to me, "Mommy, that little girl is crying a lot. I just cried a little bit. My earrings don't hurt anymore." Ha ha!

Cleaning the earrings has been easy. I got the 14k earrings since she seems to have sensitive skin, and so far so good. No redness, irritation, etc. The only pain is that she greatly dislikes the cleaning solution and virtually freaks out for no reason when we do our cleanings twice each day. And then always says it doesn't hurt. Go figure. Regardless, Daddy is going to be in charge of three things this weekend (the things that have driven me crazy all or part of these last six weeks):

1) Getting Tessa dressed in the mornings (I promise she owns cute clothes, what she chooses to wear is either not in season, doesn't fit too well anymore, or doesn't match - UGH!) As a sidenote, this morning I gave her two outfits to choose from after we were arguing about what she was going to wear and she flopped herself on the bed, muttering, "I give up." I must use that line a lot...

2) Cleaning and twisting the earrings twice per day. Why she whines and pulls away is beyond me. Hopefully it gets easier with time.

3) Getting Morgan dressed. While the little man does allow me to pick out his clothes, he certainly is an acrobat these days and getting him dressed could easily be a two-person job.