Well Then...

The evidence is right in front of me that my Little Girl is growing up. It's been coming for a long time, but I've always been able to look away. And now I can't. In fact, the Little Buds that were are now burgeoning. And it kills me. They are the first thing I see when she walks into the room. Also, I'm sure, the first thing every one else sees when she forgets to wear clothing and comes dragging her sleepy self out of her room every morning. You see, she's a nudist. Always has been. And she hates it when I remind her to wear clothes. So we struck a deal. She won't come out in her birthday suit and I won't say, "Get in your room and cover those up!" She hates it when I say that. She also hates it when I say boobies. So...if she doesn't respond to the fact that my head is spinning 360* the first time I remind her that she's almost naked...I say, "Get in your room and cover up those boobies!" That earns me her most spiteful slanty eyed glare, but it also gets her moving. We've been waging this battle for a few years now, and finally she is starting the dressing process before she peeks her bed-headed, grouchy-mouthed, Middle-Little-Radar-Directed-Heat-Seeking-Venom-Missile-Shooting self out of her bedroom. The war that is waged in our living room every morning between The First Born and her Successor has gotten old. Very, very old. But that's another story.

I guess I finally had to face the fact that she's maturing a few months ago. She is a sensory avoider. She hates anything that stimulates her skin in even a benign way. Like tags. Lace. Straps. A hair caught on the inside of a blouse. Jeans. And so for years she has worn leggings during the colder months. And finding leggings that fit her waist and don't come up to her knees has been a trick. For the last few years I've bought her women's size Danskin leggings to meet her length and taken up the waist several inches to match her bitsy middle. But last July she turned 'just so' and I was treated to a view of what her womanly shape would some day be. Those soft and non-skin stimulating fabrics just hugged her too well. So, clearly, those are a thing of the past! For all of this summer she has worn last summer's shorts. It's getting more and more difficult to find anything in the stores for little girls that don't make them look like hoochie-mama's. I refuse to buy my little girl hip huggers, or low rise, as they call them now. What ever they call them, they are not for little girls. Since last years shorts fit, we went with them.

I did buy a few pair of low rise jeans a few years ago. Once the waist was taken up to fit her waist, they were a nice, decent, mid rise fit. That didn't come up past her ankles. And she refused to wear them. "They're too scratchy. They bug me. All I can think about is how they feel on my waist." I told her to wear them for a while and she'd get used to them. The first day that she wore them to school she came home looking like a thunder cloud with napkins protruding from her waist band in various places. "Mom. I did what you said. But all I could think about was how bothered my waist is. It bugged me ALL DAY LONG. I couldn't concentrate! It's too itchy!" So back to the leggings we went. But that was before she had hips and her butt took shape.

On the last weekend before school started, we scoped out Old Navy. Grandma Emmie said we might have luck there finding some jeans. Grandma Emmie, at my behest, also had the talk with her about her body changing and how she needed to start dressing accordingly. I also enlisted the help of The Other Mommy in these negotiations. It was all stuff I'd already said to her, but since it came from the Other Mommy and Grandma Emmie, it was worth listening to. It had more merit. More value. It meant something.

We enlisted the help of a sales lady. She looked The Girlie up and down and pulled down several styles of size 0 and 1. For good measure I also sent her into the dressing with a size 2. For good measure. Had I been her sixteen year old older sister, I would have insisted that she buy the size 0's. However, I am her Mother, and the vision that I beheld coming out wearing size 0 skinny jeans was right from the bowels of every Mother's nightmare from hell. Simultaneously, my heart stopped, I stroked out and I'm fairly sure I wet myself. They were an absolute NO! Back into the dressing room for the size 1's. Those were better. A little gap to the waist but not too much. Some room in the seat. This was good. The size 2's ought to be a perfect fit! Okay, a perfect fit for me. Not for her. The waist was way too gappy for her. And as for the seat, it was so loose that I truly could have stuffed another one of her in there. They wouldn't do. Back to the size 1's. After wearing them around the store for 30 minutes, sitting, standing, bending, squatting, she was satisfied that the waist would not gap further and I was tickled flipping pink that the seat did! So we spent a little over $100.00 on five pair of size 1's Dreamers that she will wear without argument and that both I and her Father can live with. I'm fairly sure that her first date is going to kill me.