and in some ways perhaps that's true. and in those ways being a custodial parent is even more thankless. today cecily told me that her daddy was cooler than the fair. high praise. i on the other hand was not. i understood though, if the fair happened every day i'd get tired of it, too.
on the subject of my little one i thought i would address her seemingly tireless endeavor to find out who she really is. as a young child she asked her daddy where we came from. monkeys he told her. simple enough.
later the main competition was whether she was a rock star or a princess. i would call her a goober and she would insist that she wasn't. she was either a princess or a rockstar and you couldn't tell from one moment to the next which one she was. and heaven forbid you got it wrong! sometimes i convinced her that she was both, at the same time. although that seems like it would be easy enough, it didn't always satisfy her.
then it became vastly more complex! we kept rock star and princess, but also added ballerina and astronaut. and there were combinations! sometimes even she would get frustrated that she didn't know which one she was. i would try to be the diplomatic mother and tell her she could be whatever she wanted to be because of how smart, and kind, and wonderful she was. didn't fly.
my favorite was the stage when she started adopting names. she asked if i knew she was a cecily when she was born. i told her that actually we didn't and that we had to decide between several names. i listed them for her and she decided she liked leila. so for a while her full name was cecily gwen leila leisten. although if you catch her in the wrong mood she doesn't want to be anything but cecily.
we are now somewhere inbetween those two stages. she wants to be addressed as princess sometimes, it seems to be the favorite. but other times she wants to be hermione from harry potter. i like that one, honestly. i mean she's brilliant! she wanted to paint a picture for her bedroom wall (when she has one that is, still at the 'rents) and wanted to write hermione on it. she forgot about it while she was painting though so i think we're okay. she has been combining the last two and has become princess hermione as well. whatever works, kid.
while sometimes this can get a little unnerving, just because i never know who she is going to be, i'm very proud of her efforts to understand herself and what she wants to be. i think it takes a lot of skill as a person to put yourself through all of that self examiation and come out on top like she always does. i'm hoping it gives her a head start in her teenage years, or even in her twenties when she's trying to find herself. i'll send her a huge painting for her wall that will say: "i am rockstar, astronaut, ballerina princess hermione cecily gwen leila leisten and i can be whatever i want!"
i ♥ my little girl.
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