Being who you are

Lauren's in Junior Kindergarten now, and one of the benefits of being in that slightly older group (4 1/2 year olds to 5 year olds) is that they get to go on a lot of field trips. Just yesterday they took a field trip to the library, and recently they had a field trip to the planetarium. Lauren loves to go on field trips, and she keeps asking when I'm going to go on a field trip with her.

It's not that I don't want to go, in fact for her very first field trip to a pumpkin farm, I had signed up to go as a chaperone, but that trip got canceled after a major rain storm caused major puddles and flooding on the farm. I've tried to find time to chaperone another field trip, but with my change in job title recently (this past November), I'm finding myself committed to more meetings in the office than ever before, so it's hard to find a date that coincides with a field trip where I'm available. But I know this age isn't going to last forever, so I'm just going to have to cancel a few meetings and go on the next field trip (or the one after that).

For as long as I remember, people have come up to us and told us how beautiful Lauren is, or how pretty she is. It's gotten to the point if you ask Lauren, "Are you pretty?", or "Do you know you're beautiful?", she'll get a very weary and knowing look on her face, sigh and reply back, "I know I am". If you ask her why she's beautiful, she'll usually say something like, "It's because I have long hair". She's very attached to her long hair, and while it's a part of her I don't necessarily agree that it's what makes her beautiful. She refuses to let us cut her hair still, and she prefers to wear it long.

But recently she's let on to a little secret. Every once in a while, she'll ask me "why don't I have yellow hair?", or "I want yellow hair". I don't know why, but something in our society makes being blonde too much of an attraction. Even though I've told Lauren I love her dark hair, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen since she was a baby (not to mention everyone else telling her how beautiful she is), somehow she still feels it's not enough and she needs blonde hair. I just hope all my reinforcement of how wonderful her own hair is, will make her realize she's special just the way she is.