Growing Girls

We are teaching Linnea femininity. Not quite the submissive, learn-to-be-a-devoted-wife-and-helpmeet kind of femininity, but she's definitely keen on being a girl and on all things girlish.

It's all about hair. She doesn't have a great deal of hair - she has almost none, in fact, three years old at the end of April and never a haircut needed - but what she has she wants girlified. Her cousins have blonde curls in bunches, wispy fringes held out of their eyes with clips, cute and feminine and utterly impossible for Linnea.

I got her some little snappy clips, but they slid out of her fringe. I got her some smaller ones which worked a little better. I figured out how to achieve bunches that last long enough for her to admire them in the mirror - twizzle the hair into a bunch over her ear by swirling my finger in it, then use toothed, bulldog-style clips (with little flowers on) to hold them in place. Cute.

Today she had a birthday party to go to, so I tried one last thing. I got her a narrow little hairband, the horseshoe-shaped kind covered in fabric.

Frankly, it looks dreadful. But she feels so girly!