Five going on fifteen

We made a trek to Lenox Mall yesterday to ride the Pink Pig. Normally I try to avoid malls during Christmas. I like stuff, and I don’t like being enticed into wanting even more stuff. And of course I don’t like having my kids enticed into wanting stuff, even if its wonderful educational cool stuff. But the Pink Pig benefits Children’s Healthcare, and since Three-year-old has made us very familiar with their facilities, we like the idea of donating to them. Of course getting to the Pink Pig meant navigating a sea of stressed shoppers with my little loose cannons, and since I never get to this particular mall, I inevitably ended up doing dumb things, like taking two children into the Discovery Channel store.  A foolish sales clerk allowed Five-year-old to try out a remote controlled UFO thingee, which she steered into several heads before handing over the controls.  Five-year-old, who has decided she wants to be a rock star, then found the keyboards and toy guitars and started belting out a Hilary Duff song at the top of her lungs into the keyboard mike. No doubt everyone enjoyed this mightily.

Further along, while we were waiting for Dear Husband to emerge from one store, Five-year-old informed me that she was going to run into the Gymboree store to check out the clothes, and she did.  I have the only five-year-old I know who LIKES getting clothes for presents. I find this a little unnerving.  It’s not that she doesn’t like toys, but most of the toys she likes are related in some way to “Fashion.” She wants Barbies and Bratz dolls.  She is very concerned about the way her clothes look.  She poses. She wants makeup, for pete’s sake.  

We went into Sephora to get makeup for me, and you would have thought we had just gone into a candy store.  She was enthralled.  I was pretty happy myself, because everything looks like so much FUN.  With makeup lines called Hard Candy and Urban Decay, and bath products that smell like sugar cookies and gingerbread, I was practically drooling.  Still, in my day-to-day life, I tend to forget about makeup and jewelry (I like dangly earrings) for months on end (much to the disgust of Dear Husband, who thinks I tend to look pretty shabby).  Five-year-old pestered me to try on eye shadow and nail polish, and by the end of the visit was grousing about the unfairness of it all.  So tell me, is she five, or fifteen?

She also told me that she is going to collect bangles.  Bangles. Not dolls, bugs (well, that was a long shot), rocks, stamps, stickers, or beads.  Bangles.  Dear Husband, being the sucker (oops, I mean, sweet father) he is, gave here a few inexpensive bangles from Icing.  She’s taking them to Show and Tell.  I’m sure her teacher will be thrilled.

Oh, and I think the Pink Pig was probably pretty fun. I don’t know. I hid in the gift shop.