Blue Independence...

 So...it's the day of the elementary school talent show. (Not literally as I type this...but the day this took place.) My nine year old daughter is going to sing God Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts. She'll sing a capella. Of course, I want to be there early to get a good seat but seeing as how the show starts at nine--a reasonable time, I am running late in trying to get one single solitary 4 year old ready to leave the house ready for public interaction. This means not only getting clean clothes but her "pretty pants" and her "nice shirt" (her definition, not mine) and her sparkle shoes. She's a princess, you know, so DUH, we must look very pink, and pretty, and beautiful, and sparkly... I find all of these essentials and allow her to go into her room to independently dress herself as all big girls have to come this ability and duty at some point in life. 

We all want our children to be independent. In some way we know this is a good thing but at such early ages as we desire, I wonder if it's because we're really trying to instill something crucial and vital to life or if we're just trying to cut something out of the things we need to be apart of...if we're not passing the buck just a little...making things easier for ourselves for the sake of making things easier--in theory. In this pursuit of teaching or throwing them into the appearance of independence, sometimes we get problems that take way more time out of our day than assisting in the first place, sometimes we may find it would have been better if our children were not actually independent at the moment.

As I said, I was running late. Here we are at 8:45, clearly we need to be leaving. Instead of aiding my youngest daughter in the dressing procedure, I was in my room painting my face with a little allusion of life and combing my hair--doesn't this seem innocent and reasonable? One would think. Oh, but think not, my friends.

Sometimes the word independent is just another way to say "unsupervised". Let me just say that an unsupervised giggling 4 year old may SOUND cute and sweet, but...um...that is the sound of things looking blue. BLUE? you ask. Yes. Blue.

I call her name and ask, "Are you dressed? We need to go now. Are you ready?"

She responds that she's dressed...opens the door, walks into my room to reveal the amazing and beautiful BLUE princess that she was, ready to see her sister sing at her school!

Me? I gasped. I was less than happy but recognized with a small portion of my brain WAY back in my head than this could be a humorous situation, though at that moment I was at a loss to access that emotion though the manual movements of documenting the changing of my daughter into a Smurf were readily available.

While I was adding color to my face with cosmetics, my daughter, on her own, without my guidance was independently adding color to HER face........
                                                                  ......and hands.......
                                                                               .......and feet......
                                                                                             with a Blue Marker.

I was late to the talent show but me and Smurfette arrived to see a very impressive performance of God Bless the Broken Road by our talented 9 year old girl.