Mellow Mummy: Mummy, Am I Beautiful? : Taking life as it comes...

Monday 15 October 2012

Mummy, Am I Beautiful?

Lara is growing again. At 104cm she had outgrown many of her age 4+ clothes and she isn't yet 3 and a half. Sigh. And it isn't just phsyically that Lara is changing, her behaviour is also maturing.

I am crossing everything as I type this but I really do think that the bad behaviour has peaked and that currently we have more good days than bad. Lara can be wonderfully behaved when she wants to be and is great fun to be around. I have really enjoyed my two full days a week with her during my maternity leave. They are exhausting, but worth it.

Unfortunately, every morning the dark side of Lara rears its ugly head. Why getting dressed each day has to be so much of a struggle, I really don't know. Lara on a good day will take 20 minutes to get dressed. Some days it can be more than an hour. It always involves a tea party of some sort (???), rummaging through the boxes of baby toys in the spare room, reading books, shouting, tears and tantrums. Very rarely does it involve her actually getting herself dressed.

This is one area where Lara has regressed since Holly came into our lives. I have heard that it is quite common for the older child to suddenly 'forget' how to do something that they were perfectly capable of doing before their younger sibling was born. Personally, I think that Lara just does it for fun. A refusal to put socks on because "I caaaaaaaaannnnnnt" seems to bring a barely-perceptible smirk to her face.



After the battle (in which she ALWAYS wins) is complete, I ask Lara to brush her hair - she hates me doing it (I don't blame her, I used to hate my Mum brushing my hair too). Lara will obediently take the hairbrush and brush that small strip of hair either side of her ears. Then stop.

With a matted tangle of hair poking out of the back of her head, and a wild spray of blond frizz across her forehead Lara will come running back to me with the sweetest smile she can muster and ask me, "Mummy, am I beautiful?". It isn't meant to be funny, or pleading. It is simply her checking to see if she has brushed her hair properly or not.

Every morning when she asks me this, I melt. That annoying and exhausting preschooler who, five minutes earlier was driving me to the edge of my mellowness suddenly transforms into the single most gorgeous being on the planet. I don't care how messy her hair is; at this point in time, Lara is my angel. Her blonde hair is her glowing aura, her blue eyes sparkle at me and I can say nothing else to her but "Yes". "Yes Lara, you are beautiful".

...Then I let her go to nursery looking like a scarecrow!
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