outside the (toy) box

I try so hard to be cool — not to show Thing 1 when she’s doing something that is freaking me out.  Like, yesterday, when she told me under no uncertain circumstances that she never wants a baby to grow in her body - I reassured her that she didn’t have to have a baby, no problem.  But when asked THREE times by a 4 year old, “But how do you NOT get a baby?” It’s a bit challenging.  Still, I was cool.  No problem. 

Or the other night, when she told me that I was fat (I’m not), and told my husband that he was fat (he’s not) and said that she was skinny (she’s not - we all have perfectly average healthy bodies) - I avoided turning her harmless exploration with new vocabulary into a diatribe about how all bodies are beautiful and that those words are used to make people feel badly about themselves, and I refrained from demanding that she give me the name of whomever was introducing such crap in preschool (can’t she wait to develop that kind of awful body awareness and scrutiny until she’s at least 10?) so I can strangle him… I just corrected her - ”Mom and Dad are grown up sized and you’re kid sized - and that’s just right” I thought that was pretty big of me, as I could have pretty easily let my head explode.

But, how many times is she going to tell me about her life aspirations before I freak out?  If someone asks her what she wants to be when she grows up, guess what she says?  “I want to be a princess at home.”  “A PRINCESS AT HOME?” you ask, yes, “a princess at home.”  I think she’s trying to kill me.  The truth behind the answer isn’t so bad.  She thinks a princess is a beautiful woman, in training to be queen, with magic powers who gets to do whatever she wants all the time, “like swing all day long” (I, too, would like to be a princess).  And the “at home” part is a reference to her oft repeated desire to never, ever move away from our house. She does not want to get her own house, she wants to live with us forever. I always tell her she can.  But, much like her professed desire to go to college where I work so that I can “be her teacher and we can eat lunch together every single day, ” I suspect her preferences may change over time.

So, when I hear her say that she wants to be a princess at home, I think it’s a perfectly fine aspiration, considering, but I HATE when she says this to other people who don’t know what she means.  It seems like they all fall into two camps, those who think that’s the most adorable thing (b/c they know all little girls love princesses and think it’s sweet that she isn’t interested in a career) or those who think I’m getting my comeuppance (ha, I can hear them thinking, skipping Barbie hasn’t exactly turned her into a chemist, has it?!).