WHEEEE!!! PINK!

How come just figuring out how to change my blog template is capable of making me feel this super-duper proud of myself? I bet my 4 year old could do it- I'm pretty sure they teach them html code in preschool these days. I remember in 6th grade computer class when I learned to make an amber-colored stick figure move across the screen. That was cutting edge. Also, I can't remember how to do it anymore, so that was a waste of 3 months.

Eric's been working late this week, so I've been enjoying the benefits of short-term single parenthood. Want to wear your pajamas all day? Great, me too! Macaroni & cheese for 2 nights in a row? Perfect! We will make huge messes and get glitter on everything and not have to worry about boys. It's awesome until 7:30pm, then the girls go to bed and I am BORED. I guess I could clean up the girls horrific My Little Pony mess (all 114 of them. which they know all the fruity names of.) Or maybe not. Probably not.

How about I just ramble instead?

Being the mom of girls has been an interesting experience. I was never a very girly-girl... I rode my horses bareback, climbed trees & read books most of my childhood. I am really not a particularly girly-woman. I still don't know how to put eyeliner on. Having two fluffy tutu wearing Princess wanna-be's just seems odd to me. They have such SPECIFIC girliness- Grace only ever wants to wear pink clothes and is very concerned about her hair, which she is strangely vain about. Ella insists on wearing some crazy black sparkly shoes that my mom bought her at Target EVERY DAY and has to have ribbons in her hair or she goes into meltdown. The socks have to match the shirt, which has to match the underpants, which must go with the hair things. I just don't remember being like this. I'm pretty sure I wasn't. So where the heck did it come from?

Occasionally I get a glimmer of what might be a little bit me- when Ella grows up, she wants to be a cowgirl. She's going to have fifty-hundred paint horses. She may let me ride one. Her extremely practical older sister constantly points out that Ella cannot possibly be a cowgirl when she grows up, our backyard is too small, which makes me get all unreasonably passionate about how they can be Whatever they Want when they Grow Up, don't let anything stop you from following your dreams, blah, blah, blah and they're all "whatever, crazy lady. Now shut up and get me a peanut butter sandwich."

I think living with this many girls puzzles Eric in a major way, too. I'm not sure he expected quite this much Pink Fluffiness. I don't think he thought that his clothing would get critiqued by a five-year old this early, or that there would be so many dramatic scenes played out on our staircase by Very Small Actresses wearing fancy nightgowns and costume jewelry. I know he could not have predicted that Ella's imaginery friends would be Tinkerbell and a talking purple horse that lives in the next town over.

My favorite thing about having girls... when we get in the car, I always follow the same routine- which includes (for some odd reason, who knows?) putting on chapstick. After I put it on, I hand it back to the back seat, where first one kid and then the other puts it on and then hands it back. We do this without even saying anything- it is just part of getting ready to pull out of the driveway, like putting on seatbelts. I can't exactly put my finger on why I love something so silly this much, but I do.

All this stupid Eric-working-late crap has made me way too introspective. I am in desperate need of entertainment. And possibly ice cream.