Sparkle Day

Usually, on the two days a week that I work, Olivia happily goes off to preschool. She gets up, gets dressed, and out the door with a minimum of fuss.

Except on the mornings that she doesn't. Some mornings, for no particular reason that I am aware of, the thoughts of going off to play with her friends all day just throws her into a tizzy. I can understand that. I have those days myself sometimes. Her "off" mornings used to rev my mommy guilt into high gear. Until I realized that her grief at leaving me lasted just long enough to get to the door of her school, where she would be greeted by Emmy or Kaylex or Madison, and run off to play without a second look back at me.

So yesterday was one of those mornings. She didn't want to get out of bed, she didn't want to get dressed, she didn't want to go anywhere. Until she suddenly sat up in bed and announced to me that it was "Sparkle Day" and she was going to wear something sparkly. She wanted to wear a princess dress, but I vetoed that idea really fast. Then she told me that not only was it Sparkle Day, it was also Princess Day. And Princess Day REQUIRED, at the very LEAST, a Princess dress, her Cinderella glass slippers and a crown. Her school does occasionally have dress up days, but I did not remember getting a note about a dress up day in November, so I asked her who decided it was Princess Day. And I swear, these are her exact words back to me: " I did. I decided today was Sparkle Day and today was Princess day, and nobody can take that away from me."

After hobbling around the house for a while in her glass slippers, she opted to just take those with her in her backpack, "because I might break my ankle." Good thinking. Those plastic dress up shoes have got to be a podiatrist's worst nightmare. And after a bit of a tussle, we reached a compromise on the dress: she picked out a somewhat sparkly but still preschool-appropriate dress, not a princess dress. The crown stayed on her head. I figured I had fought a good fight, and her teacher could take on the battle of the crown if she really wanted to. I was out of ammo at that point. And she was dressed. And I was almost on time for work. What a diva we are raising.