How to raise confident, content girls

I thought about titling this post Our Christmas Haul, but of course, that isn’t what Christmas is all about, or My Resolutions, but they’re distressingly similar to last years,’ and that’s really sad or homey and familiar, depending on your mood.

But then I remembered what I am succeeding at spectacularly daily. No, not finding the cure for cancer or even caucusing for random Baptist preachers who are the first in their family to graduate from high school (and to win in Iowa!): I’m raising three confident, content girls.

I wanted to wrap a bunch of the kids’ old toys for Christmas morning, or at least their new-ish snow clothes. Somehow we spend a lot of money on the girls but don’t always get a lot of present-opening-bang for our buck. Luckily, generous family and friends had wrapped exciting new things, and a couple days after the big day, a box of clothes from The Children’s Place (of the fantastic adjustable waist) arrived from fashionista Auntie Liz.

Sally and Susan rushed to try on their new clothes, and as Sally pirouetted in her new pink skirt, she said, “Susan and I really are princesses, huh? We have everything you could ever want. We have ponies [not live ones] and pretty clothes and games and books and coloring stuff. We really are princesses.” I’m writing this down for posterity and so that I can remind her of it when she’s 16 and wanting a car.

Here they are the morning of. Sally has been devouring the Magic Treehouse books — even to reading them as she walks through the store with one hand on the shopping cart so she doesn’t have to look up. How frustrating to try to communicate with someone completely lost in a book!!!

Susan, who is 3 and 1/6 years old, has been doing pretty well with the potty, but she is a recidivist of long-standing, so recently it has been necessary for me to remind her (Do you want to go potty or go to timeout you awful rotten wonderful sweet child?) about twice a day.

After she goes, I run down the checklist: did you 1) wipe your buns, 2) flush the toilet, 3) wash your hands? (if you’re familiar with the Elmo’s Potty Time dvd, you may remember that Prairie Dawn and Elmo argue as to whether there are three or four steps to the post-potty process. If you do remember this and/or find it remotely interesting, I’m sorry.) The other day when I asked if she was all done, she said, “No, I gotta wipe my cute buns.”

I’m writing that down for posterity too. And so that when she’s 16 (13? 11?) and complaining of fat buns or bad hair or a big nose or ugly clothes (unless Auntie Liz keeps ‘em coming) I can tell her with a perfectly straight (though too-chubby) face that she has a beautiful body and very cute buns.