The princess and the frog

My daughter is four years old. Which essentially means she is convinced she is a princes, the world is her castle, and her brother is her own personal private prince.

I’m ok with that. Some moms hate the whole Disney angle, I’m just happy to see them play and make up stories, and then deconstruct them until they make no sense whatsoever to a grown up. It does supply endless hours of entertainment both to them and us, and for plenty of interesting situations.

For one, her brother is only two, so although he is generally willing to play the assigned part of the prince, assuming the name and all (be it Aidan or Naveen depending on the day), some times he just wants to live dangerously and try life on the other lane. I am a firm believer that they should be allowed to. So if he wants to wear a skirt and nail polish to preschool that is fine with me.

My daughter has developed a strong sense of personal style. The first thing she does every morning is open her closet and look for an appropriate princess outfit. There are strict rules to dressing a princess, particularly as to the length of the skirt. One of my mottos in parenting is “choose your battles”. So as painful as it may be to see what she chooses to go out into the world with, and although I have to bear other mom’s stares and comments in the park, generally I will only intervene if there is a health issue involved, (like spring dresses in mid winter because none of the Disney princess wear long sleeves). On the odd occasion it has even saved my butt, like the time I forgot to dress her up for carnival. As we entered the school I saw a parade of princesses, pirates, tigers and so on. I wanted to dig a big hole and bury myself in it. What kind of a mother forgets to dress her baby up? How will she feel when she realizes she has been left out? Just as I was about to turn around and vacate the premises another mom approached me:

Other mom- “I love your daughter’s outfit, is she a hippy?”

Me, coy while raising one eyebrow –“yes?”

And that was that. In case you were wondering, my daughter did not find it peculiar that everyone else had decided to join her in the dress up frenzy.

My favourite story though is one I almost missed (and unfortunately did not photograph), cause I was too busy trying to work.

We were visiting the cousins who have two dogs and a large backyard. All of a sudden the dogs started going nuts, which happens often so I did not give it much thought, until one of the older girls came to tell me they had found a rather large frog in the house of one of the dogs. She wanted to know if it could be poisonous. This was in the south of Spain, where the only poisonous things you can find is expired shellfish and bad wine. So I said no, it’s not poisonous, and leave the poor thing alone.

Mayhem continued in the yard as I tried to finish my report. Older niece kept coming back to re confirm that the frog could not be poisonous. “no, I’m sure, let it be” I repeated barely lifting my eyes from the paper.

Long story short, older niece was rather unconvinced by my assurances, so to be safe had decided to send my daughter on the quest of retrieving the frog from the dog house (literally). In order to protect her from the potentially deadly amphibian, she had put on her some diving goggles and kitchen gloves.

In this anti-poison suit my daughter had been sent back out to the yard on her life or death mission. The dogs were going mad, older niece watched from a distance as my daughter approached the dog house, got on all fours, stuck her head in a proceeded to sing.

Unaware of the situation and fearing for the frog’s life, I finally came out demanding that they leave the poor thing alone before it had a heart attack. At this point my daughter pulled her head out of the dog house, stared at me defiantly and said:

-“momma, I can’t leave it alone, it’s my prince!”

Post Data; as soon as I managed to stop laughing I did send them back in to the house, so as far as I know the frog made it out alive, and did not turn into a prince with my daughter’s singing