I would like to have one of those…truly. A lazy, hanging around in my house slippers, not getting dressed, Dr. Phil watching, drama free day. However, having three kids, two dogs and a job that prefers that I actually work instead of hanging out on MySpace, I just don't see that happening for at least another 17 years.
So, there is *that* to look forward to.
JThe wind-down of tonight started off normal enough. There I was giving the baby his nightly bottle, the girls were busy showering or blow drying their hair. The mood was quiet, lights dimmed to lull the baby to sleep. It was disrupted when Kayla (12.5) came into the living room hysterically crying. Her hair and part of her face were covered in a towel as was her body, but she was dripping wet. Through her sobbing, all I could hear was "razor", "accident", "I didn't mean to", sob sob sob. Alarmed I looked at her legs and envisioned a trip to the emergency room. It should be noted that she doesn't shave yet. She has blond hair that isn't noticeable and she has shown no interest in shaving. I fully expected to see a cut, blood….something that indicated whatever it was that had gone horribly wrong, and I wrongly assumed it was her legs. If only…
She unwrapped the towel from her head...and it was then I noticed that the child…has shaved her eyebrows off. On accident, she said. On accident…both eyebrows. On accident, and only ½ of each eyebrow, actually. They look like little Hitler Mustaches above her eyes. As God as my witness, it was all I could do to not bust out laughing. However, she was crying hysterically…and it didn't seem prudent. I was calm about it and said that it was going to be ok, that I could fix it. That is when mini-me, clone child Katie appeared. She DID bust out laughing and then asks me how I am going to fix THAT as I was not God and could not make hair grow back. She of course was full of suggestions on how to fix it, ranging from shaving the dogs hair and gluing it on there to getting some of those fake mustaches and maybe some Velcro or duct tape.
I gritted my teeth and told her that she was NOT HELPING, as Kayla was sobbing even harder, which made Cole start crying in sympathy (or maybe he was horrified over her eyebrows…I can't be sure). She declared that she would no longer be attending school until they grew back. Lol….riiiight. I was then thinking that it would be nice if Calgon could take me away, and at the same time, I was wondering why this kind of drama always happens when my DH is not home. Coincidence? I think not.I told her to get dressed and we would assess the situation. I then told mini-me that she might want to go to her room and read or I was going to find something distasteful for her to do. I am not going to lie…her eyebrows look pretty bad. Even as I dried her hair, she was still crying at how much people were going to make fun of her tomorrow. I found my eyebrow pencil and drew some in for her, which did help. Of courses, mini-me made another re-appearance to say that she thought Kayla's fake eyebrows looked great. *sigh* I reiterated that she really needed to vamoose before bad things happened to her and she batted her Bambi eyes at me and said, "but momma…I was just trying to help".
Uh huh.She finally confessed that a friend of hers at school had shaved a portion of her eyebrows and they turned out perfect. Kayla was genuinely surprised that when she decided to shave her eyebrows, in the shower, no mirror and never having used a razor…that they would have turned out as badly as they did. Lol…imagine that? She said that she was very worried about being made fun of, that 6th graders are MEAN. She finally went to bed feeling better with her drawn in eyebrows and I did some thinking.
If someone offered me a million dollars to go back and relive my 'tween years, I would say not no, but HELL NO. I spent the better parts of my jr. high years being made fun of for one reason or another. I had hoped that my girls could skate through those years less awkwardly than I did. However, I guess in some respects…ALL of us have been there at one time or another. Whether it was a perm gone horribly wrong, or caking on that blue eyeshadow clear up to the top of our eyebrows thinking that we looked cool, or cutting our own hair and "accidentally" cutting our bangs to 1/8th of an inch in an attempt to "fix" them, only to be made fun of the next day at school. It's just going to happen.
I feel for her…I do. I can look back on my jr. high years and laugh now at all of the bone-headed things I did, and believe me…there were too many to even try to write about. But, empathy is a powerful thing…and I feel some of that same anxiousness that I had way back when just thinking about what she may go through tomorrow. The only silver lining I could find is that my daughter thinks I am a hero for "fixing" her eyebrows (she actually voluntarily hugged me), in addition to not being mad at her for doing it in the first place. I figured her having half-hitler mustache eyebrows was punishment enough. And although she may go back to being sullen towards me tomorrow, I will take what I can get…when I can get it. However, for the time being, she will be known as Frau VonHitlerBrau :)
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